Ларри Макмертри - The Last Picture Show

After that Sonny didn't come back for three days and Ruth was fearful she had ruined it all. When he did come she was so thrilled and relieved that she resolved not to seek the moment if it was going to put everything else in danger. If he would keep coming, keep wanting her, that would be enough. They sat on the blue quilt and she opened his shirt and rubbed his chest with her palm. When she looked past him, at the green wall paper and Sears and Roebuck furniture she realized that she had lived for years in a room that was terribly drab.

Sonny was hesitant about making love, worried that he could cause Ruth disappointment again. "No, look," she said, taking his hand and kissing his palms and fingers. "Nothing was your fault. You have to remember that I've been lonely for a long time. Loneliness is like ice. After you've been lonely long enough you don't even realize you're cold, but you are. It's like I was a refrigerator that had never been defrosted at all—never. All these years the ice has just been getting thicker. You can't melt all that ice in a few days, I don't care how good a man you are. I didn't even realize it, like I didn't realize till just now how ugly this room is. I don't know, maybe at the center of me there's some ice that never will melt, maybe it's just been there too long. But you mustn't worry. You didn't put it there." She moved her hand up to his shoulders.

The talk of ice and refrigerators meant little to Sonny, but he was relieved that she wanted him to make love to her again. That day she was very warm and amenable, but much calmer—calmer than he had ever known her. He recognized that in a way she had withdrawn from the struggle, but his own pleasure was so strong that he merely felt grateful, not responsible. She saw to it that he didn't feel responsible, and for herself, had no difficulties except at the very end-then, for a wistful, regretful moment, she felt like crying.

After that, for more than a month, she concentrated on making Sonny welcome. He came often, sometimes just to make love, sometimes staying to drink some hot chocolate or to let her mend his clothes. He tolerated the chocolate and the clothes mending, but Ruth knew very well that what they did on the quilt was what he really liked, what he enjoyed doing with her. It thrilled her that that, of all things, would be what made a person want to come and see her. She expected, almost from day to day, that he would tire of her, and when she saw him coming in the door wanting that same thing of her, she was always happy for a moment. Then, in March, things changed. Sonny came in one day and repeated a story about Coach Popper, one he had just heard. The week before the coach had taken the track boys to a meet in Fort Worth. Bobby Logan was sharing a room with the coach and in the middle of the night the coach mistook Bobby for Mrs. Popper and kissed him on the ear. All the boys thought that was pretty hilarious, and Sonny repeated the story to Ruth because he thought it might get her to talking about the coach a little. He could not help being curious about their life together. She told him that the coach seldom touched her, but Sonny could hardly believe that. The coach was so hairy and horny looking that the boys all supposed he kept after her all the time. Around the gym and the practice field the coach gave the impression that he was an inveterate woman chaser. "Find 'em, fool 'em, fuck 'em, and forget 'em," he was often heard to say. Sonny had the nagging feeling that the reason Ruth couldn't come with him was because the coach's tool was bigger and better. Time and again the coach had pointed out to one boy or another the ignominy of having an insufficient tool.

"Why hell yes, Joe Bob," he would say. "A feller can get along with false teeth and a glass eye and hearing aids' and even a hook or a wooden leg if he has to, but there ain't no known substitute for a big dick. I guess you're just out of luck."

When he told Ruth about the ear-kissing incident he half expected her to be flattered that her husband would miss her so, but instead she looked miserable and forlorn. They had already finished lovemaking and she was so dispirited by the news that she neglected even to cover herself with the flannel shirt.

"I don't care," she said, tears seeping out of her eyes. "I don't care who he likes. If he wants to play around with little boys and they think it's funny why should I care? I just get tired of everybody thinking he's such a mighty man just because he coaches football. I'm the one they think is nothing, just his mousy wife, and they're right, I am mousy. I might not have been if I hadn't been ignored for twenty years. Now I'm forty and I don't have any children and I can't even do . . ." sniffed, "I can't even do sex."

Sonny was stunned. He had never been so surprised. "Why did you stay with him," he asked finally. Then it was Ruth who was dumb. It was a question she had avoided for years.

"I wasn't brought up to leave a husband," she said in a small voice. "I guess that's why. Or maybe i was just scared to."

"But how did you come to marry him?" Sonny asked, still curious.

"Because my mother didn't like him, I guess," Ruth said. "I was fooled too. I was twenty years old and I thought hairy-chested football coaches were about it. I've paid for my own bad judgment."

There the conversation stalled—Ruth was too depressed to talk, and Sonny was confused. It seemed to him that Ruth must think the coach was queer or something, and the coach was the last man that anyone would accuse of such a thing. A few of the boys thought Mr. Cecil must be -they knew he got some kind of a kick out of watching them all swimming and horsing around naked at the irrigation ditch—but Mr. Cecil was much too much of a gentleman to do anything out of the ordinary, and nobody knew for sure about him. To suspect the coach of being that way was entirey too much—he didn't even mention the conversation to Duane. In fact, he had never told Duane he was sleeping with Mrs. Popper because he was afraid Duane would make fun of him for sleeping with an older woman.

It was that night, after that conversation, that things began to change for Ruth. She dreamed she was having a baby. She had had such dreams for years, but usually they were vague and fragmentary, but this one was vivid. It was not just a baby she had, though; it was Sonny. He was removed from between her legs, and afterward lay at her breast.

The next day Sonny came, and while they were spreading the blue quilt on the bedroom floor Ruth remembered the dream. It was very vivid in her mind as she undressed. She lay quietly, her eyes closed, as Sonny began, but almost before she knew it she became excited, so much so that she could not be still. She thought of the dream again, hoping the excitement would die before she became completely possessed by it, but instead of dying it became keener. Because of the dream, pleasure took her over: with her eyes shut she could pretend she was giving birth. Sonny was inside her but in truth she was bringing him out-it was that which excited her. She grabbed his hands and put them on her thighs, so that he would force them wider. She was filled with a strength that she had not suspected and held him with her thighs, just at the entrance, just connected, both of them struggling, until she was finally seized, rent by what she felt. Then she took Sonny back to her, her heart was pounding, her eyelids fluttering; she almost fainted with the relief of delivery. For half an hour she slept, not moving, and Sonny lay on top of her, not knowing if he dared move. He had no doubt that Ruth had broken through, but her success was as strange and almost as frightening as her failures. The strength she had called up amazed him: for minutes she had held him with just her thighs, his arms pinned to his sides so tightly he could not get one free. Yet, sleeping beneath him, she might have been a girl, so still and at peace she seemed.