McMurtry, Larry - Novel 05 (17 page)

 
          
 
"Hello, hello," Belinda said,
annoyed at the silence on the line.

 
          
 
Then, with another shrug, she put the receiver
back on its cradle.

 
          
 
"Nobody there," she said.

 
          
 
"You should have said whose residence it
is,"
Beverly
reminded her.

 
          
 
Belinda popped her hand over her mouth, as if
suddenly remembering that that was standard practice.

 
          
 
Then the phone rang again. I reached to get
it, as did Beverly, but Belinda was still the closest and she was in no way
daunted by her first setback.

 
          
 
"I got it," she said, grabbing it
again.

 
          
 
"Jist a minute, please," she said
into the receiver. Then she looked at me, politely trying to cover the receiver
with her small hand.

 
          
 
"Whose residence is this?" she
asked, looking around the car.

 
          
 
"Mobile operator seven calling Mr.
McGriff," a dry voice said.

 
          
 
Beverly
, annoyed at being out-positioned, made a
grab for the receiver, missed, and had to content herself with toppling Belinda
over backwards.

 
          
 
As she toppled, Belinda coolly handed me the
receiver.
Anything to defeat a sibling.

 
          
 
"Mr. McGriff speaking," I said,
watching
Beverly
pummel Belinda for her treachery.
Fortunately the girls' coats were the equivalents of 16-ounce boxing gloves. As
long as they had the coats on they could do one another little harm.

 
          
 
Naturally it was Coffee.

 
          
 
"Where have you been?" she said, in
the proprietary tone that comes naturally to anyone I’ve been married to.

 
          
 
"I'm in
Washington
," I said. It wasn't what she wanted to
know, but it was all I felt prepared to offer her. Once or twice I had
mentioned other women to Coffee, only to be met with a silence suggestive of
ice. I certainly wasn't about to mention Cindy, or Jean either.

 
          
 
Nonetheless, Coffee went into one of her
silences. She was extremely passive, on the telephone, as in life, and was
quite comfortable being silent. She would sit holding the phone for several
minutes, waiting for me to entertain her with stories or trap myself with
admissions.

 
          
 
This particular silence was not icy. I could
hear her breathing into the phone, which did not occur when she was feeling
icy. I could also picture her clearly, sitting there in an empty real estate
office, a cup of coffee at her elbow, staring out the window at the sunny
streets of
Austin
and waiting for me to tell her the latest
about Boog and Boss, or else describe purchases she wouldn't approve of.

 
          
 
Before I could do that,
Beverly
got tired of pummeling Belinda and thought
of a better tactic. She held Belinda down with one knee, unzipped the coat,
plunged in both hands and began to tickle her sister mercilessly.

 
          
 
Immediately Belinda emitted a shriek of
giggles, a shriek not lost upon my listener.

 
          
 
"What’s that?" Coffee asked.
"Where are you?"

 
          
 
There was real shock in her voice. She had
never happened to call me before when there was anyone else in my car. I
believe, in her sluggish vision. Coffee saw me as always alone, driving around
America
buying things, still essentially in love
with her. In her imaginings the spell she cast had never really been broken.

 
          
 
"Oh, that's two little girls," I said.
"I'm keeping them a few minutes while their parents run an errand. Their
parents own an antique store in
Wheaton
."

 
          
 
"Where?"
Coffee asked.

 
          
 
"
Wheaton
,
Maryland
," I said.

 
          
 
"Never heard of it," Coffee said, a
silly remark—she had never heard of places no farther away than
Waco
.

 
          
 
At that moment I happened to glance around and
saw Jean and Jimmy walking toward us on the sidewalk to my left. This was
startling, since they had departed to my right. It was as if they had walked
around the world, though probably they had only walked around the shopping
center. Certainly they were unlikely Magellans. Both had their hands in their
pockets and were plodding along silently, not looking at one another.

 
          
 
"Well?" Coffee said.

 
          
 
"Can I call you later?" I said. I
felt awkward. Jean and Jimmy were converging on my left, and Belinda was
shrieking just to my right. I was in no position to tell my former wife any of
the things she might want to hear.

 
          
 
"You better," Coffee said, an
unusually stem remark for her. She never took much note of me when we were
married, but since then I had never done anything to violate her vision of our
relationship—such as having a personal life that she could imagine. The
presence of two little girls in my car amounted to just such a violation.

 
          
 
"You don't need to sound like that,"
I said. "It's just two little girls."

 
          
 
"Yeah, but I bet they've got a
mother," Coffee said, perceptively, just as their mother—and father—passed
directly in front of my car. Coffee hung up. Jean and Jimmy walked on a few
paces and stopped.
Beverly
stopped tickling Belinda, but kept her in place with her knee—she
herself was watching her parents. Belinda had stopped shrieking and was
catching her breath. I quietly hung up, too, aware that I was in deep trouble
in Austin—the kind of trouble that occurs when you keep talking to a lazy woman
you have divorced, thus encouraging her not to bother building a new life.

 
          
 
Jean and Jimmy seemed in much deeper trouble
than I was. They almost started on a second circumlocution of the shopping
center, but lost their momentum and just stood on the sidewalk, not looking at
one another. Jean had a steely look in her eye, and she was directing it at
Jimmy. It was a look I was very familiar with—the look of a woman who is not
going to be conned even one more time by a beautiful boyishness.

 
          
 
Jimmy, of course, had the dejected look of a
man whose beautiful boyishness has just failed him, leaving him uncertain as to
what to try next. Probably a good part of his dejection stemmed from the
suspicion that he had nothing else to try.

 
          
 
Then, fortunately, he spotted
Beverly
. It revived him in a second. His wife might
be immune to boyish appeal, but his daughters weren't, and he knew it. He came
over, opened the door of the car, and kind of dove into them, giving them many
kisses and tickling them into ecstasy with his bushy beard.

 
          
 
"Hi," he said. "Thanks for
keeping them." He raised his eyes briefly but looked at the steering wheel
rather than at me.

 
          
 
"My pleasure,'* I said, concluding the
formalities. It was obvious from the way Jimmy looked at the steering wheel
that he assumed I was already fucking his wife.

 
          
 
Despite her pleasure at being tickled by her
father's beard, Belinda was still hip to the main chance.

 
          
 
"Are we going to Baskin-Roberts
now?" she asked.

 
          
 
"No," he said, looking embarrassed.

 
          
 
Both girls looked exasperated.

 
          
 
"Oh, Daddy,"
Beverly
said.

 
          
 
"You said so!" Belinda reminded him,
doubling up a tiny fist and squinting at him fiercely.

 
          
 
All this time, Jean was standing in front of
the car, looking not at me, not at him, not at anything.

 
          
 
"I know I said so," Jimmy said.
"But I can't do it today. We'll do it Friday."

 
          
 
Belinda stuck out her jaw. "Do you want a
fat lip?" she asked, holding up a tiny fist.

 
          
 
The absurdity of the threat almost unnerved
her father.

 
          
 
Beverly
gave him no time to regain his composure.
"When's Friday?" she asked.
"How many
days?"

 
          
 
"Four," he said. "Four days.
We'll get double-dip cones to make up for it, okay?"

 
          
 
Belinda opened her fist and carefully counted
out four of her own fingers, weighing them in the mind's eye against a
double-dip cone.
Beverly
made the same judgment without resorting to fingers.

 
          
 
"Okay," they said in unison,
flinging themselves back into his arms.

 
          
 
They should have hung tough. Their forgiveness
was too much. Jimmy's eyes overflowed. I wanted to hide behind my Stetson. When
he shut the door the little girls' faces were wet from his tears—not theirs.
They themselves were serene.

 
          
 
He hopped in the tiny old Volvo and left, his
cheerful daughters waving at him from my window, which I had obligingly
lowered.

 
          
 
Jean stood where she was until the Volvo went
through a traffic light and over a hill, making her safe from its rearview
mirror.

 
          
 
Then she got in and sat down, without a word
to me. In a second she had a pile of daughters in her lap. She didn't say a
word to them, either. She looked not so much calm as blank: emptied by the
effort of rejection she had just made. Probably she didn't have a word left in
her, just then. Rejecting a beautifully boyish, bushy-bearded father had
clearly taken a lot out of her, a fact even her daughters respected.

 
          
 
For a moment we all just sat. I didn't even
say hi.

 
          
 
I don't know how long we would have sat had it
not been for the restive Belinda, who after a time scooted out of her mother's
lap and began to point out some of the noteworthy features of my car.

 
          
 
"Look," she said. "He's even
got a telephone."