The Evening Star

A Novel

Larry McMurtry

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781451607727
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literature General
• Index: Literature

The earthy humor and the powerful emotional impact that set McMurtry's Terms of Endearment apart from other novels now rise to brilliant new heights with The Evening Star. McMurtry takes us deep into the heart of Texas, and deep into the heart of one of the most memorable characters of our time, Aurora Greenway—along with her family, friends, and lovers—in a tale of affectionate wit, bittersweet tenderness, and the unexpected turns that life can take. This is Larry McMurtry at his very best: warm, compassionate, full of comic invention, an author so attuned to the feelings, needs, and desires of his characters that they possess a reality unique in American fiction.

III

Aurora’s Project

1

“You sure do own a lot of gowns,” Jerry said, rolling over. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you in the same gown twice. You’re sort of a Scheherazade of gowns.”

Aurora pulled the gown of the moment back down over her hips. It was a pale peach gown she had bought in Paris some ten years back.

“I’d like to think that means I’m going to get a thousand and one nights out of you,” she said, stroking his stomach. She had become too fond of him to conceal many of her feelings, although she knew her feelings disturbed him. He would have been more comfortable if she concealed nine-tenths of her feelings, and she knew it, yet she couldn’t conceal them—or, at least, she refused to. She felt them, she wanted to feel them, she let them go on and brim over—it seemed unlikely that she would ever brim again in quite that way, and she had no intention of slapping a lid on what she felt, bleak though the ultimate consequences might be.

Jerry said nothing. It was at such moments, after lovemaking, when he felt most strongly that life would have been more comfortable if he had followed his instincts and headed out to Elko. There were probably some cute, skinny waitresses in Elko.

“I do have some very nice gowns.” Aurora said. “In my day nice gowns were thought to be a necessary accouterment to seduction—I’m sure that view has long since gone by the way. Somehow I doubt that I’m going to get anything like a thousand and one nights out of you despite my well-chosen gowns.”

They were lying in his bed at dusk, with no lights on—the sun had set, but birds were still chirping in Jerry’s backyard. Theirs was not an affair of brilliant mornings or sunny noons—theirs was an affair of dusk and gowns. Aurora managed it that way—relentlessly, but with a nice tact.

Just when Jerry was beginning to feel surly, resenting her, telling himself it was time to dig in his heels and not let her make it happen again, she arrived and somehow made it happen. She would bring over a good bottle of wine or a thermos of margaritas of her own making. He liked good wine and good margaritas—they helped him get his mind off a long day of patients whose miseries were endless and ineradicable. He was pleasantly fuzzy from the wine, or pleasantly tipsy from the margaritas; Aurora would materialize in her gown and bite his neck or something. Even when he was at his stiffest, determined not to allow her to surprise him, she would quickly worm her way around his resistance and surprise him.

At such moments she somehow wiped out the age gap and all other gaps, just with sheer appeal. Sometimes she was delicate and sometimes she was bold, sometimes she got him a little drunker than other times, but always, little by little, she dissolved his resistance. She made him forget that she was a lot more fleshy than the slim, trim exercise addicts he usually had for girlfriends. The slim, trim beauties went to no such trouble. They assumed he’d break his neck trying to seduce them, and if he didn’t, they could always race-walk away and some other guy would. Their bodies were exactly the kind of bodies he liked, and Aurora’s wasn’t at all, and yet, again and again, she coaxed him into bed.

Once he had allowed it to happen yet again, Jerry felt half annoyed, but also a little flattered. Who else had ever put that much thought, or that much tact, or anything like that much skill, into seducing him? Aurora never let it become just the same old thing—at least, she hadn’t so far. She took some pains with her preludes, bringing him tasty things to eat, or books and records she knew he wanted. She didn’t call too often, she stayed clear of him during working hours, she spaced her visits, she was responsive to anything he wanted to do, and often had things she wanted to do—erotic things—that took him by surprise.

It was odd to think of a woman her age as his mistress, but the word “girlfriend” didn’t work either for a woman her age. He didn’t quite know what to call her, but he had to admit that if a mistress was what she was, she was pretty nearly an ideal mistress. Once his resistance dissolved on a given occasion, he sometimes suddenly felt that he loved Aurora—loved her very much. He felt touched emotionally in ways that he had not been touched before.

Still, the fact remained that he was sleeping with someone he indeed might love but didn’t really want to sleep with. Sometimes he would spend half a day trying to rehearse a nice way to tell Aurora that he didn’t want to sleep with her anymore, but he never came close to actually telling her such a thing. Half an hour after rehearsing things to say that would help him get rid of her, she would show up and make him forget all his plans. There would be moments when he even felt that he was in love with her—really in love. Several times he felt it so strongly that he told her he was in love with her. Aurora usually received these declarations lightly—so lightly that it annoyed him.

“I don’t say that very often,” he complained. “I don’t tell just anybody that I’m in love with them. Doesn’t it matter to you?”

They were standing by the bed—they had been kissing, but Aurora moved back a step. She looked inaccessible, and less fond of him than she had seemed only a moment earlier.

“That’s flattering to hear, I suppose,” she said.

“You suppose?” Jerry said, startled. “Don’t you want me to love you?”

“Why, yes, I suppose,” Aurora said again, with a cool little smile.

Jerry began to feel tight in his chest. He also felt a sense of déjà vu. it was to avoid just such scenes or just such moments that he mainly kept on the move. He had been afraid one might develop with Aurora, which was why he had been planning to get rid of her. Now the ground between them was splitting—a crevasse had just opened between them, and it was widening, all because he had suddenly felt himself in love with this devilish, aging woman, and had said so.

“What are we doing here, then?” he asked. “Why do you come to my house, if you don’t want me to love you?”

“To get laid,” Aurora said.

Jerry flinched, not so much at the statement as at her tone, which was still light. She wasn’t angry or hard—moments ago they had been kissing—but she didn’t seem to take his declaration of love seriously. Nothing very strange had happened—feeling had risen up in him and he had said, “You know what? I love you.” Why had that made her step away?

“You’re joking,” he said. He decided that must be it. She was always teasing and joking, making remarks that were ironic, or sarcastic, or vulgar, or silly. Often her joking took him off guard—he was aware that she was quicker than he was, that he could never get quite in sync with her humor. Maybe instead of a widening crevasse, all that was going on was a leg pull. Maybe she was pulling back in order to suck him in a little deeper.

“Am I joking?” Aurora asked. She came back closer to him and put her arms around his neck.

“Tell me,” she said. “Am I joking?”

“I think you’re crazy,” Jerry said. “All I did was tell you I love you. Most women like to hear that.”

“Here we go, a generalization,” Aurora said. “I expect it’s a true one, of course, for once. Most women do like to be told they’re loved, but only when it’s true, my dear. Only when they can believe it—otherwise it can be rather off-putting, as you have just discovered.”

“You don’t believe me?” Jerry said. It had not occurred to him that his “I love you” would be disbelieved, although his own words, in this instance, took him by surprise—he had not really planned or expected to say it.

“Nope,” Aurora said, moving even closer. Then she bit his neck so hard he tried to jerk away. But she didn’t let him. For a moment he felt like shoving her through the window—who was she to disbelieve him so casually? But he didn’t shove her through the window—there was a rather hostile wrestling match that led to a sweaty, sticky embrace. When it was over Jerry still felt aggrieved that Aurora was so skeptical of his feelings at the moment when he felt so strongly.

“I suppose I was rather hard on you,” she said, rubbing the bite on his neck. She had broken the skin just slightly.

“You were horrible,” Jerry said. “I do love you—I wouldn’t even still be in this town, if I didn’t love you.”

Aurora didn’t look inaccessible anymore, at least. But her look now was a little sad.

“Planning to leave soon?” she asked.

“No, not really planning,” Jerry said. “But you are a big factor in my life, even though you don’t believe it.”

“What about your patients?” Aurora asked. “Were you planning on chartering a bus and taking them with you?”

Jerry didn’t answer. Actually, when contemplating Elko, he did feel guilty about his patients. He wasn’t really curing any of them—he was just sort of maintaining them, listening a lot, advising a little. Patsy had been right to call him the neighborhood priest. He wasn’t making anybody well—he was just providing a kind of consistent reassurance. Still, his parishioners did depend on him. A little reassurance was better than none.

“Say something,” Aurora demanded. “Were you just planning to run out on me and your patients too, and if so, why did you profess such shock when I made free to disbelieve your little declaration of love?”

“It wasn’t so little,” Jerry said—her immediate step back, when he’d said it, still hurt—and so did the bite on his neck.

“That’s for me to judge, and I judge it to have been modest,” Aurora said. “Your patients all sound rather crushed. I imagine they think of you as a doctor. I doubt many of them realize what a trifler you are.”

“I haven’t actually gone anywhere,” Jerry said. “How am I trifling?”

“You’re the psychiatrist,” Aurora said. “I’ve done my best not to start explaining you to yourself. That would be quite presumptuous, since I’m not a psychiatrist. I’m just a picky woman.”

“You are picky,” Jerry said.

“Yes, I know,” Aurora replied. “Men have been complaining about my pickiness since I was fifteen. I’ve heard my flaws described hundreds of times over the years.”

She fell silent. Jerry wished she’d go home, but on the other hand he knew that if he let her go home looking so sad he’d be miserable and feel guilty all night, although he really hadn’t done a thing to feel guilty for, that he could remember.

“Picky or not, I recognize that you’re a very sweet man,” Aurora said in a subdued voice. “It’s because you’re so sweet that I’ve developed this awkward crush on you. Because you’re sweet you’ve even let me indulge my crush—a generous thing for you to do. It may well be my last crush, and it’s meant a lot to me. But I’ve never been fool enough to assume it could mean much to you. I suppose that’s why I have a tendency to withdraw when you suddenly decide you love me. I feel you’re only saying it for your own benefit.”

“You mean you think I only love myself?” Jerry asked.

“No, no,” Aurora said, getting off the bed. She picked up her dress rather wearily and went into the bathroom to change. Jerry sat up, but he didn’t get out of bed. He felt it was likely to be a night he would mainly spend being depressed. Maybe he’d walk to the video store and rent a kung fu movie, as good an antidote as any to certain kinds of depression.

Aurora soon emerged from the bathroom, buttoning her dress.

“Where were we in our debate?” Jerry asked pleasantly. There was still hope that he could work her out of her low mood before she left.

Aurora sat down in a chair across from the bed and picked up a stocking. She had been to see Pascal before coming to see Jerry, and she tried to keep up certain dress standards when seeing Pascal. He had been extremely surly with her since leaving the hospital—he never failed to point out that she had dropped him for a younger man after he had cracked his skull while coming to her rescue.

Still, there was no telling—Pascal might yet be her lot in life, so she tried to keep up her standards. She wore stockings when she went to see him, and despite his surliness they managed to have a certain amount of fun.

But at the moment, with the day waning and gloom in her heart, she didn’t feel like getting back into stockings. Instead of putting them on, she wadded them up and stuffed them in her purse.

“Well, we were discussing your career as a trifler,” Aurora said. She transferred herself to the edge of his bed and turned on the bed light so she could see him better. Trifler or not, he was appealing, and never more so than when he was feeling aggrieved, or misunderstood, or pouty at the thought that he was not being taken seriously. She touched his face fondly to show that she bore him no hard feelings.

“Thanks to your indulgence I’ve become profoundly fond of you, young man,” she said. “You allowed me to take an interest in you, and now I have.”

“I’ve taken an interest in you, too, although you don’t seem to believe it,” Jerry said.

“If you don’t stop being so defensive I’m going to bite you again, and this time it will really hurt,” Aurora said.

“I’m not defensive,” Jerry said defensively. “I just don’t have any idea what you want.”

“I want you to be good,” Aurora said. “I’m having my fun and that’s fine, but I don’t like to think that I’m having it with someone who won’t bother to be good.”

Her remark was so unexpected that Jerry didn’t know quite what to say. At least she was not looking so sad. He took one of her hands and she let him hold it.

“Expense of spirit,” she said. “Remember the line? Most of the men I’ve loved haven’t been much, professionally. Hector was a minor general. My husband, Rudyard, was a minor executive. Pascal is a minor diplomat. Trevor, my most dashing beau, was a minor yachtsman. Vernon Dalhart was a minor oilman. The only first-rater I’ve ever been involved with was Alberto, my tenor, and he was only first-rate for a few years in his youth. He ended his days running a music store.”

She pursed her lips, looked away, then looked back at him. “I thought I’d do better, but when all’s said and done I didn’t do better,” she said. “Now I’ve flung myself at you just because you’re cute.

“I’m continuing my pattern of not doing better,” she added with a wry grin.

“I see—I fit right in with the rest of your guys, don’t I?” Jerry said—he liked her wry grins. “I’m as minor as the rest of them.”

“Yes, but you can still be good,” Aurora said. “You started out as a fake shrink, but now, like it or not, you’re a real shrink. People become what they do, and you are treating your patients. I like that. In fact I like it a lot. But now you have to live up to it, don’t you? I don’t mean with me. You can cast me out any day and go back to your working girls. I’ve never exactly been a working girl, but I respect them. You can have as many of them as you want, once this is done.”

“Please stop talking like that,” Jerry said. Although he knew very well that he wanted the affair to be over, he didn’t want to admit that fact to Aurora. Instead, he felt a need to deny it, even to make it sound ridiculous. He knew that Aurora’s way of looking at their situation was a good deal more honest than his own. That was no novelty, either—women were always more ho...