The Evening Star (18 page)

The General, naked except for his casts, was standing just inside the front door, waving one of his crutches at them frantically.

The ridiculous often had a calming effect on Aurora, and the sight of Hector Scott with no clothes on waving his crutch at them certainly struck her as ridiculous.

“The monster’s broken out of his crypt,” she observed coolly. “Why do you suppose he’s waving his crutch like that? Could it be an air raid?”

“No such luck, we ain’t at war,” Rosie said. “Aurora, he’s naked. How did he get downstairs?”

“Perhaps he fell out a window,” Aurora speculated. “Why don’t you duck in and get a sheet or one of the extra tablecloths so we’ll have something to wrap him in.”

“What if he won’t let me?” Rosie asked. “He might have flipped out. Flashing’s one thing, but that old boy is all-out naked.”

“Yes, yes, Hector, we see you, sight that you are,” Aurora said, moseying up the driveway. Rosie took off on a flanking movement toward the back door.

“Aurora, hurry, I have bad news,” the General yelled. He had never seen anything as exasperating as the slow way Aurora was moseying. He had gone to the extraordinary trouble of hobbling all the way down the stairs so as to bring her the news at once, but the woman was hardly moving at all. She was still ten yards away, standing coolly on the grass watching birds or something when Rosie suddenly darted out of the kitchen and started trying to wrap him in a tablecloth. It was the last straw: they might ignore his news, but they weren’t wrapping him in a tablecloth. He began to poke Rosie back with his crutch.

“Now, Hector, stop that,” Aurora said, closing the distance between them in a dramatic burst of speed. “It’s just a tablecloth. It’s not a straitjacket, and no one’s coming to take you anywhere, even if you are insane.”

She and Rosie managed to get the tablecloth more or less around the General, but because he was still on his crutches the effect was rather like installing him in a small tent, with his angry face sticking out above it.

“Will you stop it, goddamnit!” the General said. “You’re the ones who ought to be in straitjackets. All I’ve been trying to tell you is that Melanie’s run away.”

“Oh, shit,” Aurora said, dropping her end of the tablecloth. “What else is going to happen?”

“Even if Melanie left, it don’t mean we need nudists running around the house,” Rosie insisted, sticking to what she felt to be the first task. She ducked the General’s crutch and soon had him swaddled, or at least entangled, in the tablecloth.

“Can’t you two get it through your heads that I
am
a nudist now?” the General remarked, a little more calmly. “I decided to become one just after the two of you went shopping. It’s a perfectly respectable thing to be. I think Calvin Coolidge was a nudist.”

He felt the claim might be a little inaccurate, but he
had
once seen an old nudist magazine that contained a picture of someone who had looked a lot like President Coolidge.

“Well, we can argue that one till the cows come in,” Rosie said, wishing she had a safety pin. As it was, she had to stand where she was, holding the tablecloth, and well within whacking distance of the General’s crutch.

“I believe you’re a disciple of aerobics,” the General remarked. “Why can’t I be a disciple of nudism?”

“Because I don’t want to be having to look at no do-whangs when I’m waxing the floor,” Rosie said. “It’s hard enough doing these floors without distractions like that.”

“Please, both of you,” Aurora said. “You’re driving me mad. First you say Melanie’s run away, and then you start arguing about nudism.
When
did Melanie run away, and is it just to Dallas, or is it worse?”

“Well, she said they were leaving this afternoon,” the General said. He had momentarily forgotten Melanie and was more interested in dealing with Rosie’s stated objection to his nudism. It had been both milder and more specific than he had anticipated; perhaps if he showed a willingness to compromise when she was waxing the floors his main goal might be achieved.

“Oh, if that’s the only problem, then I suppose I could wear my pajama bottoms on the days when you’re doing the floors,” he said, looking at Rosie hopefully.

In fact it was just that morning, annoyed by the inordinate amount of time it took him to get his pants on over his casts, that he had decided to become a full-time nudist, though he had been gradually inching toward that decision for several weeks.

“Hector, you will not just wear your pajama bottoms on the day Rosie does the floors,” Aurora informed him. “You’re going to wear normal dress, as you always have, as long as you stay in this house. Stop pestering us about nudism and tell me where Melly thinks she’s running off to.”

“To Los Angeles, to live with her boyfriend,” the General said, annoyed. Just as he had decided to strike a compromise with Rosie, Aurora had to butt in. “I could have told you that
long ago if you hadn’t started wrapping me in the tablecloth. I’d rather be naked than look like a goddamn mummy, which is what I look like now.”

At first he had been so alarmed by Melanie’s call that he had wanted to go call the police and have them either arrest the young couple or go find Aurora and Rosie; he had struggled all the way down stairs in order to get word to Aurora at the earliest possible moment. But once downstairs, with no one there to give the news to, his alarm gradually subsided, while his pleasure at having decided to live a healthy life in the nude had swiftly risen, causing him to more or less forget Melanie for longer and longer stretches of time. Fortunately he had remembered her when he saw Aurora and Rosie drive up; his responsibility fulfilled, he was eager to continue savoring the joys of nudism, only to have Aurora and Rosie overreact and wrap him in a tablecloth.

“I don’t know why I work here, this is a crazy household,” Rosie said. She took the belt off her own slacks and tried to loop it around the General to keep the tablecloth from falling down.

“This
is
a crazy household, who could deny it, Hector,” Aurora said accusingly, just as the phone rang.

“Maybe that’s Melly,” she said. “Let’s all cross our fingers.”

“Aurora, that’s just a superstition,” the General said. “Facts don’t cease to be facts just because people cross their fingers.”

“Melanie and Bruce might have broken up before they could get packed,” Aurora said. “I broke up with Rudyard several times and almost divorced him once because of difficulties he made about my packing. I’m sure the same thing could have happened to Melanie.”

She left Rosie to make what she could of the General and the tablecloth, and went to the kitchen to answer the phone. She felt she might feel more peaceful in her kitchen, since frequently that was the only place where she felt peaceful at all.

“Hello, you’re not going to go, I won’t hear of it in my
present state,” she said into the receiver, assuming she had her granddaughter on the other end of the line.

“I wasn’t going,” Pascal informed her. “I’m just having a drink. I got the new sheets today, you should come and see.

“Pascal, bad timing,” Aurora said. “In fact it’s quite the worst timing you’ve ever managed to achieve, which is saying a lot. I haven’t a moment for you just now, and anyway why would I care about the fact that you’ve changed your linen? Hector’s just become a nudist and my granddaughter is running away from home. Only a person with a very odd world view, such as yourself, would distract me with talk of bed linen at such a time.”

“But we talked—I’m making plans,” Pascal said, deflated. No matter when he called Aurora, and no matter what he said, it always seemed to be bad timing.

“Well, I’m sorry if I’ve punctured your little balloons again,” Aurora said, wondering for a moment what his new sheets might look like.

“My balloons?” Pascal asked, confused.

“Yes—I see your fantasies about me as being rather like little balloons,” Aurora said. “I’m always puncturing them.”

“Yes, puncture,” Pascal said. “Everything I try, you puncture right away. Don’t you want me?”

“Well, I don’t know the answer to that,” Aurora admitted. “At the moment I can’t say definitively that I don’t, but I can say definitively that I don’t want to talk about it right now. Goodbye for the moment.”

She hung up, only to have the phone ring again before she could even scan the contents of her refrigerator to see if she had anything edible ready to hand. In all the emergencies of her life, her first instinct had been to eat, and it was, in her opinion, a perfectly healthy instinct. After all, no fuel, no fight.

“Granny?” Melanie said, when Aurora picked up the phone. Even in that one word, Aurora heard a new note of hope.

“Hello, Melly,” Aurora said, feeling nervous. Puncturing
Pascal’s balloons was one thing—she didn’t want to puncture Melanie’s if she could help it.

“I guess I’m rather hoping you haven’t left yet,” she added, cautiously.

“We left but we’ve just gone a little ways,” Melanie said, very surprised that her grandmother’s response was so low key.

“We’re just in Flatonia, getting gas,” she added.

“Flatonia sounds more like a place where one would get flats,” Aurora said. “Are you quite sure about this decision to go live in L.A.?”

“Yeah, we’re going,” Melanie said, with such a note of happiness in her voice that Aurora immediately gave up all thought of talking her out of it. All that she had been meaning to say—all the proper cautions, all the fruits of her own experience, all the wisdom of the ages couldn’t counter Melanie’s hopefulness; nor, in her view, should those things be allowed to interfere with it. Since she’d become an overweight teenager, Melanie had almost never sounded either happy or hopeful—her life had been a matter of small losses and small defeats. Now, suddenly, a boy had wanted her enough to ask her to run away with him. Though usually much wanted herself, Aurora had no trouble imagining how wonderful Melanie must feel. Someone had actually wanted to embark on a grand adventure with her.

Melanie was nervous, and when she was nervous she chewed on her lower lip. The phone booth she was standing in was hot, sweat was pouring off her face, and she was partly really wanting to get the call over with, and also partly really wanting to talk to her granny. Part of the nervousness was just her fear that somehow her granny would manage to overrule her and make them come back; it was sort of a surprise that she wasn’t trying. Melanie had expected that she would immediately blast off at Bruce a few times—her granny had not been all that impressed with Bruce, though Rosie liked him and had pointed out to Melanie long ago that if she intended to keep looking for a beau her granny
was
impressed with she’d probably be looking all her life.

“I imagine it must be wonderful—you do sound wonderful, Melly,” Aurora said in a very quiet voice. Just in time she had mastered herself and refrained from saying all the things Melanie expected her to say.

“Oh, Granny!” Melanie said, so startled she almost dropped the phone. There was a silence, as both women, the young and the old, struggled with their emotions, trying to make them conform to what might safely be said over the phone.

“I wanted to come by for a hug, but I was afraid, and anyway you weren’t home,” Melanie said. Bruce had finished gassing up and was leaning on the car, waiting for her. Bruce was in great spirits, though—he wasn’t rushing her or anything.

“No, dear, you were quite right just to leave,” Aurora said. “You’re a very large part of my life, you know. Selfish as I am, if you’d come by for your hug, I might not have been able to bring myself to let you go.”

“I guess that’s what I was afraid of,” Melanie said. Something in her grandmother’s sad tone made her almost want to give it up, to turn and go back to take care of her granny. But she didn’t want that, either, and even her granny seemed to be saying that
she
didn’t want that.

“Have a good time in California and let me know when you’ve brought your living quarters up to my standards, so Rosie and I can visit,” Aurora said. “Drive safely and give me a call by and by.”

“Oh, Granny!” Melanie said, bursting into tears as she hung up.

Aurora sighed and sniffed. Then she got up and rummaged in her refrigerator until she had put together a respectable snack—a little chicken salad, a hunk of cold lamb, a good tomato, and a little custard that she had hidden behind the milk. She had the conviction that she had left a piece of mince pie for just such an emergency, but exhaustive research failed to turn it up. Few things were more welcome in emotional emergencies than a solid chunk of mince pie.

“Which of you ate my mince pie?” she asked, when the
General and Rosie, unable to stand the suspense any more, made their way cautiously into the kitchen. Rosie had procured a few safety pins and now had the General wrapped so securely in the tablecloth that he did look rather like a mummy.

“Oh, I ate that, right after I took up nudism,” the General admitted. “It was there, and I didn’t see your name on it. Besides, I was nervous because Melly was running away and I couldn’t reach you.”

“Is she running away?” Rosie asked.

“Yes, and she sounds really happy,” Aurora said. “I have decided, for once, to let be.”

“Why?” Rosie and the General asked, almost in chorus.

“Because I want her to have that happiness,” Aurora said sharply. “It may not last, of course—but then, what lasts?”

“Well, we’ve lasted, sort of,” the General said.

“‘Sort of is right,” Aurora said.

16

The next morning Aurora woke in a state of low spirits, of the sort most apt to afflict her when she managed a more or less noble act—in this case, letting Melanie leave them to pursue her own life. It was the right thing to do, and she considered that she had done it with at least a bit of grace; yet the fact was, Melanie was now gone and she missed her already. Also, Melanie was pregnant, and who would be there now to see that she stayed on a proper, healthy prenatal course? Young people were apt to place too much confidence in their bodies; they assumed things would turn out all right, and yet, often, when babies were born, things didn’t.