by John Updike
“You think she really is in love with me? Mrs. Smith.”
“All I know is what I get from you. You say she is.”
“No, I never actually said that. Did I?”
She doesn’t bother to answer him out of her huge face, magnified by her drowsy contentment. Chalk highlights run along her tanned skin.
He repeats, “Did I?” and pinches her arm, hard. He hadn’t meant to do it so hard; something angered him at the touch of her skin. Her sullenness.
“Ow. You son of a bitch.”
Still she lies there, paying more attention to the sun than him. He gets up on an elbow and looks across her dead body to the lighter figures of two sixteen-year-olds standing sipping orange crush from cardboard cones. The one in a white strapless peeks up at him from her straw with a brown glance. Her skinny legs dark as a Negro’s. Her hipbones making gaunt peaks on either side of her slanted flat belly.
“Oh, all the world loves you,” Ruth says suddenly. “What I wonder is why?”
“I’m lovable,” he says.
“I mean why the hell you. What’s so special about you?”
“I’m a mystic,” he says. “I give people faith.” Eccles has told him this. Once, with a laugh, probably meaning it sarcastically. You never knew what Eccles was really meaning; you had to take what you wanted. Rabbit took this to heart. He never would have thought of it himself. He doesn’t think much about what he gives other people.
“You give me a pain,” she says.
“Well I’ll be damned.” The injustice: after he was so proud of her in the pool, loved her so much.
“What in hell makes you think you don’t have to pull your own weight?”
“What’s your kick? I support you.”
“The hell you do. I have a job.” It’s true. A little after he went to work for Mrs. Smith she got a job as a stenographer with an insurance company that has a branch in Brewer. He wanted her to; he was nervous about how she’d spend her afternoons with him away. She said she never enjoyed that business; he wasn’t so sure. She wasn’t exactly suffering when he met her.
“Quit it,” he says. “I don’t care. Sit around all day reading mysteries. I’ll support ja.”
“You’ll support me. If you’re so big why don’t you support your wife?”
“Why should I? Her fathers’ rolling in it.”
“You’re so smug, is what gets me. Don’t you ever think you’re going to have to pay the price?” She looks at him now, squarely with eyes bloodshot from being in the water. She shades them with her hand. These aren’t the eyes he met that night by the parking meters, flat pale disks like a doll might have. The blue of her irises has deepened inward and darkened with a richness that, singing the truth to his instincts, disturbs him.
These eyes sting her and she turns her head away to hide the tears, thinking, That’s one of the signs, crying easily. God, at work she has to get up from the typewriter and rush into the john like she had the runs and sob, sob, sob. Standing there in a booth looking down at a toilet laughing at herself and sobbing till her chest hurts. And sleepy. God, after coming back from lunch it’s all she can do to keep from stretching out in the aisle right there on the filthy floor between Lilly Orff and Rita Fiorvante where that old horse’s neck Honig would have to step over her. And hungry. For lunch an ice-cream soda with the sandwich and then a doughnut with the coffee and still she has to buy a candy bar at the cash register. After she’s been trying to slim down for him and had lost six pounds, at least one scale said. For him, that was what was rich, changing herself for him when he was worth nothing, less than nothing, he was a menace, for all his mildness. He had that mildness. The others didn’t. The thing was, when they knew you were one, they didn’t think you were human, and thought they were entitled. Which they were, but still, some of the things. It was like they hated women and used her. But now she forgives them because it all melts, the next day is the next day and you’re still the same and there, and they’re away. The older they were, the more like presidents they looked, the wiser they should have been, the worse they were. Then they wanted some business their wives wouldn’t give, in from the back which she didn’t mind it was like being a hundred miles away once you get adjusted, or with the mouth. That. What do they see in it? It can’t be as deep, she doesn’t know. After all it’s no worse than them at your bees and why not be generous, the first time it was Harrison and she was drunk as a monkey anyway but when she woke up the next morning wondered what the taste in her mouth was. But that was just being a superstitious kid there isn’t much taste to it a little like seawater, just harder work than they probably think, women are always working harder than they think. The thing was, they wanted to be admired there. They really did want that. They weren’t that ugly but they thought they were. That was the thing that surprised her in high school how ashamed they were really, how grateful they were if you just touched them there and how quick word got around that you would. What did they think, they were monsters? If they’d just thought they might have known you were curious too, that you could like that strangeness there like they liked yours, no worse than women in their way, all red wrinkles, my God, what was it in the end? No mystery. That was the great thing she discovered, that it was no mystery, just a stuck-on-looking bit that made them king and if you went along with it could be good and anyway put you with them against those others, those little snips running around her at hockey in gym like a cow in that blue uniform like a baby suit she wouldn’t wear it in the twelfth grade and took the demerits. God she hated some of those girls. But she got it back at night, taking that urgency they didn’t know existed like a queen. Boy, there wasn’t any fancy business then, you didn’t even need to take off your clothes, just a little rubbing through the cloth, your mouths tasting of the onion on the hamburgers you’d just had at the diner and the car heater ticking as it cooled, through all the cloth, everything, off they’d go. They couldn’t have felt much it must have been just the idea of you. All their ideas. Sometimes just French kissing not that she ever really got with that, sloppy tongues and nobody can breathe, but all of a sudden you knew from the way their lips went hard and opened and then eased shut and away that it was over. That there was no more push for you and you better back off if you wanted to keep your dress dry. That made you dirty. You, their stickum. They couldn’t forgive her that. Her forgiving them. She didn’t blame them though that was their mothers making them write her name on the lavatory walls. Allie told her about that, kindly. But she had some sweet things with Allie; once after school with the sun still up they drove along a country road and up an old lane and stopped in a leafy place where they could see Mt. Judge, the town against the mountain both, dim in the distance, and he put his head in her lap, her sweater rolled up and her bra undone, and it was like a baby gently, her bees (who called them her bees? not Allie) firmer and rounder then, more sensitive; his waiting wet mouth so happy and blind and the birds making their warm noises overhead in the sunshine. Allie blabbed. He had to blab. She forgave him but it made her wiser. She began the older ones; the mistake if there was one but why not? Why not? was the question and still held; wondering if there was a mistake makes her tired just thinking, lying there wet from swimming and seeing red through her eyelids, trying to move back through all that red wondering if she was wrong. She was wise. With them being young did for being pretty, and them being older it wasn’t such a rush. Boy some bastards you think never, like their little contribution’s the greatest thing the world’s ever going to see if it ever gets here.
But this one. What a nut. He had though that mildness. At least he saw you as being there. Boy that first night when he said that so sort of proudly “Hey” she didn’t mind so much going under in fact it felt like she should. She forgave them all then, his face all their faces gathered into a scared blur and it felt like she was falling under to something better than she was. But then after all it turns out he’s not that different, hanging on you all depr
essed and lovey and then sick of you or less just bored really when it’s done. It’s getting quicker, and quicker, more like a habit, he really hurries now when senses or she tells him she’s lost it. Then she can just lie there and in a way listen and it’s soothing; but then she can’t go to sleep afterward. Some nights he tries to bring her up but she’s just so sleepy and so heavy down there it’s nothing; sometimes she just wants to push him off and shake him and shout, I can’t, you dope, don’t you know you’re a father! But no. She mustn’t tell him. Saying a word would make it final; it’s just been one period and the next is coming up in a day maybe she’ll have it and then she won’t have anything. As much of a mess as it is she doesn’t know how happy that would make her really. At least this way she’s doing something, sending those candy bars down. God she isn’t even sure she doesn’t want it because he wants it from the way he acts, with his damn no stripper just a nice clean piece. She isn’t even sure she didn’t just deliberately bring it on by falling asleep under his arm just to show the smug bastard. For the thing about him he didn’t mind her getting up when he was asleep and crawling into the lousy bathroom just so long as he didn’t have to watch anything or do anything. That was the thing about him, he just lived in his skin and didn’t give a thought to the consequences of anything. Tell him about the candy bars and feeling sleepy he’ll probably get scared and off he’ll go, him and his good clean piece and his cute little God and his cute little minister playing golf every Tuesday. For the damnedest thing about that minister was that, before, Rabbit at least had the idea he was acting wrong but with him he’s got the idea he’s Jesus Christ out to save the world just by doing whatever comes into his head. I’d like to get hold of the bishop or whoever and tell him that minister of his is a menace. Filling poor Rabbit full of something nobody can get at and even now, filling her ear, his soft cocksure voice answers her question with an idle remote smugness that infuriates her so the tears do come.
“I’ll tell you,” he says. “When I ran from Janice I made an interesting discovery.” The tears bubble over her lids and the awful taste of the pool-water is sealed into her mouth. “If you have the guts to be yourself,” he says, “other people’ll pay your price.”
Making awkward calls is agony for Eccles; at least anticipation of them is. Usually, the dream is worse than the reality: so God has disposed the world. The actual presences of people are always bearable. Mrs. Springer is a plump, dark, small-boned woman with a gypsy look about her. Both the mother and the daughter have a sinister aura, but in the mother this ability to create uneasiness is a settled gift, thoroughly meshed into the strategies of middle-class life. With the daughter it is a floating thing, useless and as dangerous to herself as to others. Eccles is relieved that Janice is out of the house; he feels guiltiest in her presence. She and Mrs. Fosnacht have gone into Brewer to a matinee of Some Like It Hot. Their two sons are in the Springers’ back yard. Mrs. Springer takes him through the house to the screened-in porch, where she can keep an eye on the children. Her house is expensively but confusedly furnished; each room seems to contain one more easy chair than necessary. To get from the front door to the back they take a crooked path in the packed rooms. She leads him slowly; both of her ankles are bound in elastic bandages. The pained littleness of her steps reinforces his illusion that her lower body is encased in a plaster cast. She gently lets herself sink onto the cushions of the porch glider and startles Eccles by kicking up her legs as with a squeak and sharp sway the glider takes her weight. The action seems to express childish pleasure; her bald pale calves stick out stiff and her saddle shoes are for a moment lifted from the floor. These shoes are cracked and rounded, as if they’ve been revolved in a damp tub for years. He sits down in a trickily hinged aluminum-and-plastic lawn chair. Through the porch screen at his side, he can see Nelson Angstrom and the slightly older Fosnacht boy play in the sun around a swing-slide-sandbox set.
“It’s nice to see you,” Mrs. Springer says. “It’s been so long since you came last.”
“Just three weeks, isn’t it?” he says. The chair presses against his back and he hooks his heels around the pipe at the bottom to keep it from folding. “It’s been a busy time, with the confirmation classes and the Youth Group deciding to have a softball team this year and a series of deaths in the parish.” His previous contacts with this woman have not disposed him to be apologetic. Her having so large a home offends his sense of place; he would like her better if this were the porch of a shanty.
“Yes I wouldn’t want your job for the world.”
“I enjoy it most of the time.”
“’They say you do. They say you’re becoming quite an expert golf player.”
Oh dear. And he thought she was relaxing. He thought for the moment they were on the porch of a shabby peeling house and she was a long-suffering fat factory wife who had learned to take things as they came. That is what she looked like; that is easily what she might have been. Fred Springer when he married her was probably less likely-looking than Harry Angstrom when her daughter married him. He tries to imagine Harry four years ago, and gets an attractive picture: tall, fair, famous in his school days, clever enough—a son of the morning. His air of confidence must have especially appealed to Janice. David and Michal. Husbands are a woeful lottery. He scratches his forehead and says, “Playing golf with someone is a good way to get to know him. That’s what I try to do, you understand—get to know people. I don’t think you can lead someone to Christ unless you know him.”
“Well now what do you know about my son-in-law that I don’t?”
“That he’s a good man, for one thing.”
“Good for what?”
“Must you be good for something?” He tries to think. “Yes, I suppose you must.”
“Nelson! Stop that this minute!” She turns rigid in the glider but does not rise to see what is making the boy cry. Eccles, sitting by the screen, can see. The Fosnacht boy stands by the swing, holding two red plastic trucks. Angstrom’s son, some inches shorter, is batting with an open hand toward the bigger boy’s chest, but does not quite dare to move forward a step and actually strike him. Young Fosnacht stands with the maddening invulnerability of the stupid, looking down at the flailing hand and contorted face of the smaller boy without even a smile of satisfaction, a true scientist, observing without passion the effect of his experiment. Mrs. Springer’s voice leaps to a frantic hardness and cuts through the screen: “Did you hear me I said stop that bawling!”
Nelson’s face turns up toward the porch and he tries to explain, “Pilly have—Pilly—” But just trying to describe the injustice gives it unbearable force, and as if struck from behind he totters forward and slaps the thief’s chest and receives a mild shove that makes him sit on the ground. He rolls on his stomach and spins in the grass, revolved by his own incoherent kicking. Eccles’ heart seems to twist with the child’s body; he knows so well the propulsive power of a wrong, the way the mind batters against it and each futile blow sucks the air emptier until it seems the whole frame of blood and bone must burst in a universe that can be such a vacuum.
“The boy’s taken his truck,” he tells Mrs. Springer.
“Well let him get it himself,” she says. “He must learn. I can’t be getting up on these legs and running outside every minute; they’ve been at it like that all afternoon.”
“Billy.” The boy looks up in surprise toward Eccles’ male voice. “Give it back.” Billy considers this new evidence and hesitates indeterminately. “Now, please.” Convinced, Billy walks over and pedantically drops the toy on his sobbing playmate’s head.
The new pain starts fresh grief in Nelson’s throat, but seeing the truck on the grass beside his face chokes him. It takes him a moment to realize that the cause of his anguish is removed and another moment to rein the emotion in his body. His great dry gasps as he rounds these corners seem to heave the sheet of trimmed grass and the sunshine itself. A wasp bumping persistently against th
e screen dips and the aluminum chair under Eccles threatens to buckle; as if the wide world participates in Nelson’s readjustment.
“I don’t know why the boy is such a sissy,” Mrs. Springer says. “Or maybe I do.”
Her sly adding this irks Eccles. “Why?”
The purple skin under her eyes lifts and the corners of her mouth pull down in an appraising scowl. “Well, he’s like his dad: spoiled. He’s been made too much of and thinks the world owes him what he wants.”
“It was the other boy; Nelson only wanted what was his.”
“Yes and I suppose you think with his dad it was all Janice’s fault.” She pronounces “Janice” with German juice, Channiss, making the girl seem thicker, darker, more precious and important than the tenuous, pathetic image in Eccles’ mind. He wonders if she’s not, after all, right: if he hasn’t gone over to the other side.
“No I don’t,” he says. “I think his behavior has no justification. This isn’t to say, though, that his behavior doesn’t have reasons, reasons that in part your daughter could have controlled. With my Church, I believe that we are all responsible beings, responsible for ourselves and for each other.” The words, so well turned-out, taste chalky in his mouth. He wishes she’d offer him something to drink. Spring is turning hot.
The old gypsy sees his uncertainty. “Well that’s easy to say,” she says. “It’s not so easy maybe to take such a view if you’re nine months expecting and from a respectable home and your husband’s running around a few miles away with some bat and everybody thinks it’s the funniest thing since I don’t know what.” The word “bat” darts into the air like one, quick and black.
“Nobody thinks it’s funny, Mrs. Springer.”