The Last One Left Read Online Free PDF Page B

refilled her empty coffee cup and warmed his cup from the Thermos pitcher. “I’ve thought about it a lot. I think it was because you were so young when your parents were killed in that accident, and you felt responsible for Leila, and your father had left everything in such a dreadful foolish muddle.”
    “Oh, come
on!
”
    “No, really. Try to understand. You are only thirty years old, Sam. What did we get married on when you got out of law school? That old car. And barely a hundred dollars. That was only
seven years ago!
You are worth a lot of money.”
    “Simple ruthless greed, darling.”
    “Don’t make jokes, please, when I’m trying to explain something. It’s because you have this terrible impatience with carelessness and muddy thinking and laziness. You drive yourself so hard. It isn’t money hunger. You just seem to want to go around neatening upthe world. It exasperates you to see somebody operating in a sloppy way. For goodness sake, just look at Gil and that car-wash thing. He came to you as a client. Nearly bankrupt. Patent suits, wasn’t it?”
    “Mostly. Offered me a one-third interest if I could salvage it and get it back on its feet, help arrange refinancing.”
    “Now he has scores of those coin things all over the southwest, and what is your interest worth, Sam?”
    “Considerable. So?”
    “You neatened it up like a compulsive housekeeper. And what you demanded of me, dear, was that I be the loveliest, smartest, most charming young housewife and matron and hostess in all Texas. You were perfectly sure that because you love me, and because I had to be willing to give a hundred and ten percent to the program, I would be just that. Boy-Sam had to be the smartest, merriest, happiest, gutsiest little kid in the world, because he was yours and all he’d have to do would be live up to his potential. You demand just as much of your sister, Leila, in another way. But, right up until recently, she’s had the spirit and the toughness to ignore the pressure. Boy-Sam and I, we just weren’t strong enough. We had to get out.”
    “Pressure on the kid?”
    “He adores you. He strained every nerve and muscle to please you, to do what he thought you wanted him to do. But he’s just a little guy. He’s only five years old. Oh, you wouldn’t criticize. But when he’d fall short of what you expected of him, you’d give him a little pat and say, ‘Well, kid, you gave it a try,’ and walk away. He is sensitive to every nuance of your voice. You never glanced back and saw his eyes filling with tears because he felt he’d failed to measure up to the impossible standards you set him. You set impossible standards for yourself, and then you meet them, God knows how. You expect it of yourself. You take your own total performance for granted. I tell you, it discourages the hell out of us fallible types.”
    “You are everything I want you to be, Lyd.”
    “When I was little we had an old brown dog. He smiled at you. He’d get in a chair with you and when he was asleep he’d start to push. Just a little bit. He’d take up all the slack he could get. When you shoved back, he’d wake up and smile at you and go back to sleep and start pushing again. And finally it was his chair and you had no more room in it, so you moved.”
    “Maybe he liked closeness.”
    “Believe me, I could have endured. I could have kept striving to achieve perfection, kept falling short, kept seeing that puzzled yearning behind your polite smile, dear. But he’s my only chick. What right have I to let him grow up with the feeling that nothing he can do is quite good enough? By eighteen he would have been a crashing neurotic, full of despair and self-hate. I hug him a lot, Sam. I give him extravagant compliments. And I don’t tell him I love him
because
he can do this or do that. I tell him I love him because he is Boy-Sam.”
    “What’s so damned unnatural about a father wanting his son to excel, Lydia Jean?”
    She made a