"I suppose I must."
"Why? Wouldn't you like to keep him?"
"What are you saying, Harry?"
"Keep him, if he makes you happy. I don't seem to, so go ahead, until you've had your fill at least."
"Suppose I never have my fill?"
"Then I guess you should marry him."
"Charlie can never marry anybody."
"Who says?"
"He did once. I asked him why not and he wouldn't say. Maybe it has to do with his heart murmur. That was the only time we ever discussed it."
"What do you and he discuss? Except which way to do it next." She might have risen to this taunt but doesn't. She is very flat, very honest and dry this morning, and this pleases him. A graver woman than he has known reveals herself. We contain chords someone else must strike. "We don't say much. We talk about funny little things, things we see from his windows, things we did as children. He loves to listen to me; when he was a boy they lived in the worst part of Brewer, a town like Mt. Judge looked marvellous to him. He calls me a rich bitch."
"The boss's daughter."
"Don't, Harry. You said that last night. You can't understand. It would sound silly, the things we talk about. He has a gift, Charlie does, of making everything exciting – the way food tastes, the way the sky looks, the customers that come in. Once you get past that defensiveness, that tough guy act, he's quite quick and, loving, in what he sees. He felt awful last night, after you left, that he had made you say more than you meant to. He hates to argue. He loves life. He really does, Harry. He loves life."
"We all do."
"Not really. I think our generation, the way we were raised, makes it hard for us to love life. Charlie does. It's like – daylight. .You want to know something?"
He agrees, "Sure," knowing it will hurt.
"Daylight love – it's the best."
"O.K. Relax. I said, keep the son of a bitch."
"I don't believe you."
"Only one thing. Try to keep the kid from knowing. My mother already knows, the people who visit her tell her. It's all over town. Talk about daylight."
"Let it be," Janice says. She rises. "Goddam your mother, Harry. The only thing she's ever done for us is try to poison our marriage. Now she's drowning in the poison of her life. She's dying and I'm glad."
"Jesus, don't say that."
"Why not? She would, if it were me. Who did she want you to marry? Tell me, who would have been wonderful enough for you? Who?"
"My sister," he suggests.
"Let me tell you something else. At first with Charlie, whenever I'd feel guilty, so I couldn't relax, I'd just think ofyour mother, how she's not only treated me but treated Nelson, her own grandson, and I'd say to myself, O.K., fella, sock it to me, and I'd just come."
"O.K., O.K. Spare me the fine print."
"I'm sick, so sick, of sparing you things. There've been a lot of days" – and this makes her too sad to confess, so that a constraint slips like a net over her face, which goes ugly under the pull "when I was sorry you came back that time. You were a beautiful brainless guy and I've had to watch that guy die day by day."
"It wasn't so bad last night, was it?"
"No. It was so good I'm angry. I'm all confused."
"You've been confused from birth, kid." He adds, "Any dying I've been doing around here, you've been helping it right along." At the same time, he wants to fuck her again, to see if she can turn inside out again. For some minutes last night she turned all tongue and his mouth was glued to hers as if in an embryo the first cell division had not yet occurred.
The phone rings. Janice plucks it from its carriage on the kitchen wall and says, "Hi, Daddy. How was the Poconos? Good. I knew she would. She just needed to feel appreciated. Of course he's here. Here he is." She holds it out to Rabbit. "For you."
Old man Springer's voice is reedy, coaxing, deferential. "Harry, how's everything?"
"Not bad."
"You still game for the ball game? Janice mentioned you asked about the tickets to the Blasts today. They're in my hand, three right behind first base. The manager's been a client of mine for twenty years."
"Yeah, great. The kid spent the night at the Fosnachts, but I'll get him back. You want to meet at the stadium?"
"Let me pick you up, Harry. I'll be happy to pick you up in my car. That way we'll leave Janice yours." A note in his voice that didn't used to be there, gentle, faintly wheedling: nursing along an invalid. He knows too. The world knows. It'll be in the halt next week. LINOTYPER'S WIFE LAYS LOCAL SALES REP. Greek Takes Strong Anti– Viet Stand.
"Tell me, Harry," Springer wheedles on, "how is your mother's health? Rebecca and I are naturally very concerned. Very concerned."
"My father says it's about the same. It's a slow process, you know. They have drugs now that make it even slower. I've been meaning this week to get up to Mt. Judge to see her but we haven't managed."
"When you do, Harry, give her our love. Give her our love."
Saying everything twice: he probably swung the Toyota franchise because the Japs could understand him second time around.
"O.K., sure enough. Want Janice back?"
"No, Harry, you can keep her." A joke. "I'll be by twelvetwenty, twelve-thirty."
He hangs up. Janice is gone from the kitchen. He finds her in the living room crying. He goes and kneels beside the sofa and puts his arms around her but these actions feel like stage directions followed woodenly. A button is off on her blouse and the sallow curve of breast into the bra mixes with her hot breath in his ear. She says, "You can't understand, how good he was. Not sexy or funny or anything, just good."
"Sure I can. I've known some good people. They make you .feel good."
"They make you feel everything you do and are is good. He never told me how dumb I am, every hour on the hour like you do, even though he's much smarter than you could ever imagine. He would have gone to college, if he hadn't been a Greek."
"Oh. Don't they let Greeks in now? The nigger quota too big?"
"You say such sick things, Harry."
"It's because nobody tells me how good I am," he says, and stands. The back of her neck is vulnerable beneath him. One good karate chop would do it.
The driveway crackles outside; it's much too early for Springer. He goes to the window. A teal-blue Fury. The passenger door swings open and Nelson gets out. On the other side appears Peggy Gring, wearing sunglasses and a miniskirt that flashes her big thighs like a card dealer's thumbs. Unhappiness -being deserted – has made her brisk, professional. She gives Rabbit hardly a hello and her sunglasses hide the eyes that he knows from school days look northeast and northwest. The two women go into the kitchen. From the sound of Janice snuffling he guesses a confession is in progress. He goes outside to finish the yard work he began last night. All around him, in the back yards of Vista Crescent, to the horizons of Penn Villas with their barbecue chimneys and aluminum wash trees, other men are out in their yards; the sound of his mower is echoed from house to house, his motions of bending and pushing are carried outwards as if in fragments of mirror suspended from the hot blank sky. These his neighbors, they come with their furniture in vans and leave with the vans. They get together to sign futile petitions for better sewers and quicker fire protection but otherwise do not connect. Nelson comes out and asks him, "What's the matter with Mommy?"
He shuts off the mower. "What's she doing?"
"She's sitting at the table with Mrs. Fosnacht crying her eyes out."
"Still? I don't know, kid; she's upset. One thing you must learn about women, their chemistries are different from ours."
"Mommy almost never cries."
"So maybe it's good for her. Get lots of sleep last night?"
"Some. We watched an old movie about torpedo boats."
"Looking forward to the Blasts game?"
"Sure."