by John Updike
"Is she still going to be a stewardess?"
"Well, that's a little, where you'd expect, up in the air-"
"I knew you were going to say 'up in the air'!"
"But I think so. If one of these jerks doesn't talk her into living with him instead. But girls now-they're not so easy to talk into things. They're, what's the word, empowered. Judy teases me, the way I keep looking at her, but it's amazing to me, how beautiful she's become, even since I saw her last summer. Every tooth, every eyelash, you know, just so exact. She has Dad's and my cowlick in one eyebrow. And there's a new switchy quick way she moves and does things. She's smaller than her mother, though her hair is like Pru's used to be, but she doesn't have that sort of awkward broadbeamy semi-helpless thing Pru does. Judy is knit. She went out for all these sports at high school, and works out at this health club. She lets me feel her biceps."
"She sounds like your mother."
"Really? Mom's such a misfit, and Judy's such a smart fit, but, yeah, maybe in a way. Bonewise." Those little Springer hands. "I love looking at her hands, they're almost childlike, but have this kind of graceful, what can I say, composure, and long half-tone fingernails. One half purple, the other yellow. I said to her, USAirways isn't going to let you get away with that. She says, 'I know. It's a fling, Dad. You've heard of flings.'"
"And Pru?"
"Good news. She saw this ad for 'Human Resources Assistant' for one of the big banks down on Market Street saying 'peopleoriented individual' and they liked her; she's one of three they've narrowed it down to. Her experience wasn't quite what they want but I guess this guy Gekopoulos wrote her a raving recommendation."
"I meant you and Pru."
"Oh. Oh. That's O.K. You've met her, you know what she's like. She isn't one to make a big show of her feelings, usually. She says having a man in the apartment is as bad as having two untrained dogs. She should talk, we're surrounded by her relatives out here, they keep calling up and dropping around."
"You certainly are more talkative, now you're back with her."
"It's you I like to talk to. Too much, huh?"
"Oh, no. But why do you call her Pru? Your mother calls her Teresa."
"How'd you know that?"
"She called, to invite me to dinner. Just her and Ronnie. And Billy if I wished."
"Billy. That goon. I'm sorry I saddled you with him that night. He got me lost, in my own county, and then stuck in traffic at the greatest moment in history."
"Yes, it was terrible the way he did that. He cries about it in his sleep."
A pause, while he wonders how much he's supposed to make of this disclosure. "About Teresa," he says. "That's her name, but in high school everybody thought she was prudish, and there was another Terry in the class. You're right, though, it's nice to be back with her. I love her, I guess."
"Of course you do."
"I've begun to check around, for jobs in mental health. Akron's a lot like Brewer except it's three times as big. It has the same river, and miles of row houses, and abandoned plants turned into something else-they've turned a huge Quaker Oats factory into a Hilton Hotel with round rooms in the old grain silos-and no shortage of misery. I was thinking of looking for something in a drug-rehab place. Addicts may freeze to death but they don't do suicide."
"That was too bad. I could tell how upset you were."
"I wasn't that upset. Esther told me not to take it egotistically. She asked me when I gave notice if that was the reason. I said I hoped not. Hey, Happy Birthday! Forty. Wow."
"You remembered."
"How could I forget? I even have a quotation to give you. 'The very motion of our life is towards happiness.' End quote."
"What's that from?"
"From a very dumb book Ronnie Harrison gave me for Christmas. It's on page one, which is as far as I've gotten."
"Maybe you should go on to page two."He has broken the lovely flow they were having. Ronnie Harrison still frightens her. He asks, "How's the weather in DiamondCounty?""Cold. Winter! Inches of snow, and some more tonight. We all thought it couldn't do winter any more, because of global warming."
"I know. Here too. The same weather, basically the sameeverything. But I like it. I like seeing different license plates."
"Your mother said over the phone she and Ronnie are going down to the Florida condo and thinking of selling the house and moving there for good. They both have aches and pains warm weather might help."
"For years I've told her to sell. But listen. If you do go to Mom's for dinner, take Billy or somebody with you, for protection from Ron. You're too-"
She waits."Delicious. Sweet. Innocent," he finds himself saying.
"Nelson."
"Yes?"
"I have been seeing Billy."
"Surprise, surprise."
"You're teasing, aren't you, when you call him a goon?"
"Well, he was a boy goon. Anyway, in this country even goons have their rights."
"I think he's darling."
"In what way?"
"He thinks I'm wonderful. After those horrible things you got me to admit in the car at least I don't have anything to hide from him. He says when he's with me his anxieties go away."
"Well, is that a good reason-?"
"Nelson, no reason is perfect. But then neither are we."
"O.K., I'll buy that." Happiness for her is already rising in him, like water trembling upward.
"I have a serious question. Don't be flip, it matters to me. Ever since I was a little girl I've thought if I ever got married it would be in a church, with all the formality."
Annabelle asks, "If Billy and I get married, will you give me away?"
Says Nelson, "Gladly."
John Updike
***
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