Terms of Endearment by Larry McMurtry Page B

years, tears sometimes came to her eyes when she looked at it for too long, as they might have that evening had not Emma appeared at her bedroom door just when she did.
    “There you are, you spy,” Emma said. She had decided attack was the best plan—it was certainly the easiest, since she still felt full of hostility. Her mother was wearing one of her many trailing gowns, this one deep rose, belted with a turquoise belt she had found somewhere in Mexico. She was holding an extraordinary necklace in one hand, amber with silver, that had come from Africa and that Emma understood had been lost.
    “Hey, you found your amber necklace,” she said. “That’s so lovely. Why don’t you give it to me before you lose it again?”
    Aurora looked at her daughter, who was dressed creditably for once in a nice yellow dress. “Ha,” she said. “Perhaps I will, when you acquire presence enough to wear it.
    “I’ve just been looking at my Renoir,” she added.
    “That’s nice,” Emma said, looking at it herself.
    “It certainly is,” Aurora said. “I’m afraid I had a good deal rather be looking at my Renoir than talking to Alberto. I was forced to ask his son, thanks to you. Probably we’re in for a good deal of Genoa, no matter what.”
    “Why do you see him if you don’t like him?” Emma asked, following her mother, who had drifted out on her second-floor patio. “That’s what I can never understand about you. Why do you see all these people if you really don’t like them?”
    “Luckily for you, you aren’t old enough to understand that,” Aurora said. “I have to do something with myself. If I don’t, old age will set in next week.”
    She rested her hands on the balcony of her patio and stood with her daughter watching the moon rise over her elm, over the cypress that she loved above all trees in the world, over the tall wall of pines that bordered her back yard.
    “Besides, I do like them,” she said thoughtfully. “They are mostly quite charming men. I seem to have been bred for either more or less than charm. I’ve had less and I can’t find more. You yourself have certainly settled for considerably less than charm.”
    “I hate charm,” Emma said at once.
    “Yes, you’re much too immature for my necklace,” Aurora said, putting it around her neck. “Would you help me fasten it?”
    She considered the moon a moment longer with a restful expression. Emma had noticed the expression often, usually before social occasions. It was as if her mother was suspending herself for a little while in order to be the more energetic later.
    “Besides,” Aurora said, “it is not really a great disparagement to say that I prefer my Renoir to a given man. It is a very fine Renoir. Few enough can measure up.”
    “I like it but I’d still rather have the Klee,” Emma said. It was her grandmother’s other good picture, bought when she was a very old lady. Her mother had never loved it, though she allowed it to hang in the living room. Apparently it had been the last of many subjects of controversy between Amelia Starrett and her daughter Aurora, for at the time it was purchased Klee was no longer cheap. Her mother had not wanted her grandmother to spend such a sum on a picture she had not found congenial, and the fact that the picture had multiplied in value many times over had not diminished her resentment at all. It was a striking, stark composition, just a few lines that angled sharply and never quite met, some black, some gray, some red. Her mother had allowed it a panel on the white wall near the piano, and too near the large windows, Emma thought. At times the picture was overwhelmed with light and became almost invisible.
    “Well, you may have it as soon as you acquire a proper residence,” Aurora said. “I don’t dislike it enough to consign it to a garage, but if you ever have a whole house you must take it at once. It was one of your grandmother’s two serious mistakes, the other, of course,