by John Updike
"That's nice," she says, stroking the extent of his extended cock, glistening with her spittle.
"You're nice," he tells her, "not to lose faith."
"I like it," she tells him, "making you get big and strong."
"Why bother?" he asks. "I'm a creep."
"Want to come into me?" the girl asks. But when she lies on her back and spreads her legs, her lack of self-consciousness again strikes him as sad, and puts him off, as does the way she winces when he seeks to enter; so that he grows small. Her blurred face widens its holes and says with a rising inflection, "You don't like me."
While he fumbles for an answer, she falls asleep. It is the answer to a question he hadn't thought to ask: was she tired? Of course, just as she was hungry. A guilty grief expands his chest muscles and presses on the backs of his eyes. He gets up, covers her with a sheet. The nights are growing cool, August covers the sun's retreat. The cold moon. Scraped wallpaper. Pumice stone under a flash bulb. Footprints stay for a billion years, not a fleck of dust blows. The kitchen linoleum is cold on his feet. He switches off the garage light and spreads peanut butter on six Saltines, making three sandwiches. Since Janice left, he and Nelson shop for what they like, keep themselves stocked in salt and starch. He eats the crackers sitting in the living room, not in the silverthread chair but the old brown mossy one, that they've had since their marriage. He chews and stares at the uninhabited aquarium of the television screen. Ought to smash it, poison, he read somewhere the reason kids today are so crazy they were brought up on television, two minutes of this, two minutes of that. Cracker crumbs adhere to the hair of his chest. Six gray. Must be more than that. What did Janice do for Stavros she didn't do for him? Only so much you can do. Three holes, two hands. Is she happy? He hopes so. Poor mutt, he somehow squelched her potential. Let things bloom. The inside of a great lily. He wonders if Jesus will be waiting for Mom, a man in a nightgown at the end of a glossy chute. He hopes so. He remembers he must work tomorrow, then remembers he mustn't, it is Sunday. Sunday, that dog of a day. Ruth used to mock him and church, in those days he could get himself up for anything. Ruth and her chicken farm, wonders if she can stand it. Hopes so. He pushes himself up from the fat chair, brushes crumbs from his chest hair. Some fall and catch further down. Wonder why it was made so curly there, springy, they could stuff mattresses with it, if people would shave, like nuns and wigs. Upstairs, the body in his bed sinks his heart like a bar of silver. He had forgotten she was on his hands. Bad knuckles. The poor kid, she stirs and tries to make love to him again, gives him a furry-mouthed French kiss and falls asleep at it again. A day's work for a day's lodging. Puritan ethic. He masturbates, picturing Peggy Fosnacht. What will Nelson think?
Jill sleeps late. At quarter of ten Rabbit is rinsing his cereal bowl and coffee cup and Nelson is at the kitchen screen door, redfaced from pumping his bicycle. "Hey, Dad!"
"Shh."
"Why?"
"Your noise hurts my head."
"Did you get drunk last night?"
"What sort of talk is that? I never get drunk."
"Mrs. Fosnacht cried after you left."
"Probably because you and Billy are such brats."
"She said you were going to meet somebody in Brewer."
She shouldn't be telling kids things like that. These divorced women, turn their sons into little husbands: cry, shit, and change Tampax right in front of them. "Some guy I work with at Verity. We listened to some colored woman play the piano and then I came home."
"We stayed up past twelve o'clock watching a wicked neat movie about guys landing somewhere in boats that open up in front, some place like Norway -"
"Normandy."
"That's right. Were you there?"
"No, I was your age when it happened."
"You could see the machine gun bullets making the water splash up all in a row, it was a blast."
"Hey, try to keep your voice down."
"Why, Dad? Is Mommy back? Is she?"
"No. Have you had any breakfast?"
"Yeah, she gave us bacon and French toast. I learned how to make it, it's easy, you just smash some eggs and take bread and fry it, I'll make you some sometime."
"Thanks. My mother used to make it."
"I hate her cooking. Everything tastes greasy. Didn't you used to hate her cooking, Dad?"
"I liked it. It was the only cooking I knew."
"Billy Fosnacht says she's dying, is she?"
"She has a disease. But it's very slow. You've seen how she is. She may get better. They have new things for it all the time."
"I hope she does die, Dad."
"No you don't. Don't say that."
"Mrs. Fosnacht tells Billy you should say everything you feel."
"I'm sure she tells him a lot of crap."
"Why do you say crap? I think she's nice, once you get used to her eyes. Don't you like her, Dad? She thinks you don't."
"Peggy's O.K. What's on your schedule? When was the last time you went to Sunday school?"
The boy circles around to place himself in his father's view. "There's a reason I rushed home. Mr. Fosnacht is going to take Billy fishing on the river in a boat some guy he knows owns and Billy asked if I could come along and I said I'd have to ask you. O.K., Dad? I had to come home anyway to get a bathing suit and clean pants, that fucking mini-bike got these all greasy."
All around him, Rabbit hears language collapsing. He says weakly, "I didn't know there was fishing in the river."
"They've cleaned it up, Ollie says. At least above Brewer. He says they stock it with trout up around Eifert's Island."
Ollie, is it? "That's hours from here. You've never fished. Remember how bored you were with the ball game we took you to."
"That was a boring game, Dad. Other people were playing it. This is something you do yourself. Huh, Dad? O.K.? I got to get my bathing suit and I said I'd be back on the bicycle by ten-thirty." The kid is at the foot of the stairs: stop him.
Rabbit calls, "What am I going to do all day, if you go off?"
"You can go visit Mom-mom. She'd rather see just you anyway." The boy takes it that he has secured permission, and pounds upstairs. His scream from the landing freezes his father's stomach. Rabbit moves to the foot of the stairs to receive Nelson in his arms. But the boy, safe on the next-to-bottom step, halts there horrified. "Dad, something moved in your bed!"
"My bed?"
"I looked in and saw it!"
Rabbit offers, "Maybe it was just the air-conditioner fan lifting the sheets."
"Dad." The child's pallor begins to recede as some flaw in the horror of this begins to dawn. "It had long hair, and I saw an arm. Aren't you going to call the police?"
"No, let's let the poor old police rest, it's Sunday. It's O.K., Nelson, I know who it is."
"You do?" The boy's eyes sink upon themselves defensively as his brain assembles what information he has about long-haired creatures in bed. He is trying to relate this contraption of half-facts to the figure of his father looming, a huge riddle in an undershirt, before him. Rabbit offers, "It's a girl who's run away from home and I somehow got stuck with her last night."
"Is she going to live here?"
"Not ifyou don't want me to," Jill's voice composedly calls from the stairs. She has come down wrapped in a sheet. Sleep has made her more substantial, her eyes are fresh wet grass now. She says to the boy, "I'm Jill. You're Nelson. Your father told me all about you."
She advances toward him in her sheet like a little Roman senator, her hair tucked under behind, her forehead shining. Nelson stands his ground. Rabbit is struck to see that they are nearly the same height. "Hi," the kid says. "He did?"
"Oh, yes," Jill goes on, showing her class, becoming no doubt her own mother, a woman pouring out polite talk in an unfamiliar home, flattering vases, curtains. "You are very much on his mind. You're very fortunate, to have such a loving father."
The kid looks over with parted lips. Christmas morning. He doesn't know what it
is, but he wants to like it, before it's unwrapped.
Tucking her sheet about her tighter, Jill moves them into the kitchen, towing Nelson along on the thread of her voice. "You're lucky, you're going on a boat. I love boats. Back home we had a twenty-two-foot sloop."
"What's a sloop?"
"It's a sailboat with one mast."
"Some have more?"
"Of course. Schooners and yawls. A schooner has the big mast behind, a yawl has the big one up front. We had a yawl once but it was too much work, you needed another man really."
"You used to sail?"
"All summer until October. Not only that. In the spring we all used to have to scrape it and caulk it and paint it. I liked that almost the best, we all used to work at it together, my parents and me and my brothers."
"How many brothers did you have?"
"Three. The middle one was about your age. Thirteen?"
He nods. "Almost".
"He was my favorite. Is my favorite."
A bird outside hoarsely scolds in sudden agitation. Cat? The refrigerator purrs.
Nelson abruptly volunteers, "I had a sister once but she died."
"What was her name?"
His father has to answer for him. "Rebecca."
Still Jill doesn't look toward him, but concentrates on the boy. "May I eat breakfast, Nelson?"
"Sure."
"I don't want to take the last of your favorite breakfast cereal or anything."
"You won't. I'll show you where we keep them. Don't take the Rice Krispies, they're a thousand years old and taste like floor fluff. The Raisin Bran and Alphabits are O.K., we bought them this week at the Acme."
"Who does the shopping, you or your father?"
"Oh – we share. I meet him on Pine Street after work sometimes."
"When do you see your mother?"
"A lot of times. Weekends sometimes I stay over in Charlie Stavros's apartment. He has a real gun in his bureau. It's O.K., he has a license. I can't go over there this weekend because they've gone to the Shore."
"Where's the shore?"
Delight that she is so dumb creases the corners of Nelson's mouth. "In New Jersey. Everybody calls it just the Shore. We used to go to Wildwood sometimes but Dad hated the traffic too much."
"That's one thing I miss," Jill says, "the smell of the sea. Where I grew up, the town is on a peninsula, with sea on three sides."
"Hey, shall I make you some French toast? I just learned how."
Jealousy, perhaps, makes Rabbit impatient with this scene: his son in spite of his smallness bony and dominating and alert, Jill in her sheet looking like one of those cartoon figures, justice or Liberty or Mourning Peace. He goes outside to bring in the Sunday Triumph, sits reading the funnies in the sunshine on the porchlet steps until the bugs get too bad, comes back into the living room and reads at random about the Egyptians, the Phillies, the Onassises. From the kitchen comes sizzling and giggling and whispering. He is in the Garden Section (Scorn not the modest goldenrod, dock, and tansy that grow in carefree profusion in fields and roadside throughout these August days; carefully dried and arranged, they will form attractive bouquets to brighten the winter months around the corner) when the kid comes in with milk on his mustache and, wideeyed, pressingly, with a new kind of energy, asks, "Hey Dad, can she come along on the boat? I've called up Billy and he says his father won't mind, only we have to hurry up. You can come too."
"Maybe I mind."
"Dad. Don't." And Harry reads his son's taut face to mean, She can hear. She's all alone. We must be nice to her, we must be nice to the poor, the weak, the black. Love is here to stay.
Monday, Rabbit is setting the Vat front page. WIDOW, SIXTY-SEVEN, RAPED AND ROBBED. Three Black Youths Held.
Police authorities revealed Saturday that they are holding for questioning two black minors and Wendell Phillips, 19, of 42B Plum Street, in connection with the brutal assault of an unidentified sywsfyz kmlhs the brutal assault of an unidentified elderly white woman late Thursday night.
The conscienceless crime, the latest in a series of similar incidents in the Third Ward, aroused residents of the neighborhood to organize a committee of protest which appeared before Friday's City Council session.
Nobody Safe
"Nobody's safe on the st
"Nobody's safe on the streets any more," said committee spokesman Bernard Vogel to VAT reporters.
"Nobody's safe not even in our own homes."
Through the clatter Harry feels a tap on his shoulder and looks around. Pajasek, looking worried. "Angstrom, telephone."
"Who the hell?" He feels obliged to say this, as apology for being called at work, on Verity time.
"A woman," Pajasek says, not placated.
Who? Jill (last night her hair still damp from the boat ride tickled his belly as she managed to make him come) was in trouble. They had kidnapped her -the police, the blacks. Or Peggy Fosnacht was calling up to offer supper again. Or his mother had taken a turn for the worse and with her last heartbeats had dialled this number. He is not surprised she would want to speak to him instead of his father, he has never doubted she loves him most. The phone is in Pajasek's little office, three walls of frosted glass, on the desk with the parts catalogues (these old Mergenthalers are always breaking down) and the spindled dead copy. "Hello?"
"Hi, sweetie. Guess who."
` Janice. How was the Shore?"
"Crowded and muggy. How was it here?"
"Pretty good."
"So I hear. I hear you went out in a boat."
"Yeah, it was the kid's idea, he got me invited by Ollie. We went up the river as far as Eifert's Island. We didn't catch much, the state put some trout in but I guess the river's still too full of coal silt. My nose is so sunburned I can't touch it."
"I hear you had a lot of people in the boat."
"Nine or so. Ollie runs around with this musical crowd. We had a picnic up at the old camp meeting ground, near Stogey's Quarry, you know, where that witch lived so many years. Ollie's friends all got out guitars and played. It was nice."
"I hear you brought a guest too."
"Who'd you hear that from?"
"Peggy told me. Billy told her. He was all turned-on about it, he said Nelson brought a girlfriend."
"Beats a mini-bike, huh?"
"Harry, I don't find this amusing. Where did you find this girl?"
"Uh, she's a go-go dancer in here at the shop. For the lunch hour. The union demands it."
"Mere, Harry?"
Her weary dismissive insistence pleases him. She is growing in confidence, like a child at school. He confesses, "I sort of picked her up in a bar."
"Well. That's being honest. How long is she going to stay?"
"I haven't asked. These kids don't make plans the way we used to, they aren't so scared of starving. Hey, I got to get back to the machine. Pajasek doesn't like our being called here, by the way."
"I don't intend to make a practice of it. I called you at work because I didn't want Nelson to overhear. Harry, now are you listening to me?"
"Sure, to who else?"
"I want that girl out of my home. I don't want Nelson exposed to this sort of thing."
"What sort of thing? You mean the you and Stavros sort of thing?"
"Charlie is a mature man. He has lots of nieces and nephews so he's very understanding with Nelson. This girl sounds like a little animal out of her head with dope."
"That's how Billy described her?"
"After she talked to Billy Peggy called up Ollie for a better description."
"And that was his description. Gee. They got along famously at the time. She was better-looking than those two old crows Ollie had along, I tell ya."
"Harry, you're horrible. I consider this a very negative development. I suppose I have no right to say anything about how you dispose ofyour sexual needs, but I will not have my son corrupted."
"He's not corrupted, she's got him to help with the dishes, that's more than we coul
d ever do. She's like a sister to him."
"And what is she to you, Harry?" When he is slow to answer, she repeats, her voice taunting, aching, like her mother's, "Harry, what is she to you? A little wifey?"
He thinks and tells her, "Come on back to the house, I'm sure she'll go."
Now Janice thinks. Finally she states: "If I come back to the house, it'll be to take Nelson away."
"Try it," he says, and hangs up.
He sits a minute in Pajasek's chair to give the phone a chance to ring. It does. He picks it up. "Yeah?"
Janice says, near tears, "Harry, I don't like to tell you this, but if you'd been adequate I would never have left. You drove me to it. I didn't know what I was missing but now that I have it I know. I refuse to accept all the blame, I really do."
"O.K. No blame assigned. Let's keep in touch."
"I want that girl away from my son."
"They're getting along fine, relax."
"I'll sue you. I'll take you to court."
"Fine. After the stunts you've been pulling, it'll at least give the judge a laugh."
"That's my house legally. At least half of it is."
"Tell me which my half is, and l'll try to keep Jill in it."
Janice hangs up. Maybe using Jill's name had hurt. He doesn't wait for another ring this time, and leaves the cubicle of frosted glass. The trembling in his hands, which feel frightened and inflated, merges with the clatter of the machines; his body sweat is lost in the smell of oil and ink. He resettles himself at his Mergenthaler and garbles three lines before he can put her phone call in the back of his mind. He supposes Stavros can get her legal advice. But, far from feeling Stavros as one of the enemy camp, he counts on him to keep this madwoman, his wife, under control. Through her body, they have become brothers.