The Late Child by Larry McMurtry

if you knew exactly what happened I wouldn’t want you to tell me about it,” Harmony said. “I just don’t care to hear about it right now, Gary.”
    But it did make her feel a sadness for Jasmine—that was probably what caused her to let herself go to the extent of weighing three hundred and fifty pounds.
    â€œI know what you’re thinking,” Gary said. He had knownHarmony so long that much of the time he actually did know what she was thinking—at least he usually came close.
    â€œI’m trying
not
to think, Gary,” Harmony pointed out. “The fewer thoughts I have right now, the better.”
    â€œHarmony, you’re not going to turn into a drunk who weighs three hundred and fifty pounds,” Gary said. “This is the worst tragedy ever, but you’ll survive. You have to. You have Eddie.”
    Well, it was the truth—and if any little boy deserved a good mom it was Eddie. For sure he deserved a mom who could afford to own a car. Right now, when he was only in kindergarten, maybe it didn’t matter so much; but in a few years it would be a big embarrassment for him, that his mom couldn’t even afford a car; there probably weren’t two hundred people in Las Vegas so poor they couldn’t afford some kind of car. When he got big enough to go on dates—after all, that would only be another seven or eight years—lack of a car would amount to a serious problem.
    â€œMaybe they’ll make me manager of the recycling plant,” Harmony said, thinking out loud. Gary got a look on his face that suggested that he didn’t think being manager of a recycling plant was aiming high enough—but, from Harmony’s point of view, it was sort of shooting for the stars. After all, she didn’t have many skills—for most of her life her beauty had been the only skill she needed, nobody else had been chosen Miss Las Vegas Showgirl three times running.
    â€œGary, don’t look that way. I want to make enough money to buy a car, otherwise Eddie’s going to be embarrassed,” Harmony said.
    The truth was, the people in her house—although they were her dearest friends—were beginning to depress her. Jasmine had passed out on the couch—her makeup was all runny.
    Meanwhile, Gary had gone to the bathroom and taken several pills. Gary had never been able to stay off speed; he claimed it was working odd hours that made him need it but why he needed it didn’t really matter; the fact was, Gary took a lot of speed. It made him bitchy when he was on his way up and even bitchier when he was on his way down. Pretty soon he was goingto start bitching out Jessie, who had been crying continuously ever since she heard the news. If there was such a thing as a contest for continuous crying, Jessie would win hands down.
    Juliette had finally worn out and gone to sleep in a chair, and Myrtle, very drunk, was sowing disorder in Harmony’s kitchen. She was so drunk she couldn’t tell a clean dish from a dirty dish; she took a whole dishwasherful of unwashed dishes and put them back in the cabinet on top of the perfectly clean dishes that were already there.
    â€œMyrtle, those dishes haven’t been washed, please leave them in the dishwasher,” Harmony said.
    â€œHarmony, I was washing dishes before you were born,” Myrtle said. It was pointless to argue with her when she was drunk. Reason was the last thing Myrtle wanted to listen to; even when she was sober, she wasn’t crazy about listening to it.
    Harmony decided she couldn’t stand to be at home anymore. Of course, it was several hours before her sisters would be arriving from Tulsa, but she didn’t care. Several hours of sitting in the Las Vegas airport was preferable, in her view, to even one hour of watching Jessie cry or Jasmine smear her makeup or Myrtle sow disorder in her kitchen.
    So she drove Gary down to the Stardust, where he worked.