"Yes-s." Her bright eyes passed over his head. "Over the phone, I was so stupid, you mentioned explaining."
Had he? What had he wanted to explain? That it was not his fault. Yet Nelson thought it was. For taking her in? But she was unsheltered. For fucking her? But it is all life, sex, fire, breathing, all combination with oxygen, we shimmer at all moments on the verge of conflagration, as the madhouse windows tell us. Rabbit tried to remember. "You had asked about Skeeter, why I was sure he hadn't set the fire."
"Yes. Why were you?"
"He loved her. We all did."
"You all used her?"
"In ways."
"In your case" – strange precision, clubwoman keeping a meeting within channels, the vowels roughened by cigarettes and whisky, weathered in the daily sunslant of cocktails – "as a concubine?"
He guessed at what the word meant. "I never forced it," he said. "I had a house and food. She had herself. We gave what we had."
"You are a beast." Each word was too distinct; the sentence had been lying in her mind and had warped and did not quite fit.
"O.K., sure," he conceded, refusing to let her fly, to let that caged outrage escape her face and scream. Stepdaddy behind her coughed and shifted weight, preparing to be embarrassed. Harry's guts felt suspended and transparent, as before a game. He was matched against this glossy woman in a way he was never matched with Jill. Jill had been too old for him, too wise, having been born so much later. This little pug, her money and rasping clubwoman voice aside, was his generation, he could understand what she wanted. She wanted to stay out ofharm's way. She wanted to have some fun and not be blamed. At the end she wanted not to have any apologizing to do to any heavenly committee. Right now she wanted to tame the ravenous miracle of her daughter's being cast out and destroyed. Mrs. Aldridge touched her cheeks in a young gesture, then let her hands hang heavy beside her hips.
"I'm sorry," she said. "There are always . . . circumstances. I wanted to ask, were there any . . . effects."
"Effects?" He was back with blackened bones, patterns of teeth, melted bracelets. He thought of the bracelets girls in high school used to wear, chains with name-tags, Dorene, Margaret, Mary Ann.
"Her brothers asked me . . . some memento…"
Brothers? She had said. Three. One Nelson's age.
Mrs. Aldridge stepped forward, bewildered, hoping to be helpful. "There was a car."
"They sold the car," Rabbit said, too loudly. "She ran it without oil and the engine seized up and she sold it for junk."
His loudness alarmed her. He was still indignant, about the waste of that car. She took a step backward, protesting, "She loved the car."
She didn't love the car, she didn't love anything we would have loved, he wanted to tell Mrs. Aldridge, but maybe she knew more than he, she was there when Jill first saw the car, new and white, her father's gift. Rabbit at last found in his mind an "effect." "One thing I did find," he told Mrs. Aldridge, "her guitar. It's pretty well burned, but-"
"Her guitar," the woman repeated, and perhaps having forgotten that her daughter played brought her eyes down, made her round face red and brought the man over to comfort her, a man blank like men in advertisements, his coat impeccable and in the breast pocket a three-folded maroon handkerchief. "I have noth ing," she wailed, "she didn't even leave me a note when she left." And her voice had shed its sexy roughness, become high and helpless; it was Jill again, begging, Hold me, help me, I'm all shit inside, everything is crashing in.
Harry turned from the sight. The chief, leading him out the side door, said, "Rich bitch, if she'd given the girl half a reason to stay home she'd be alive today. I see things like this every week. All our bad checks are being cashed. Keep your nose clean, Angstrom, and take care ofyour own." A coach's paternal punch on the arm, and Harry was sent back into the world.
"Pop, how about a quick one?"
"Not today, Harry, not today. We have a surprise for you at home. Mim's coming."
"You sure?" The vigil for Mim is months old; she keeps sending postcards, always with a picture of a new hotel on them.
"Yep. She called your mother this morning from New York City, I talked to your mother this noon. I should have told you but you've had so much on your mind I thought, Might as well save it. Things come in bunches, that's the mysterious truth. We get numb and the Lord lets us have it, that's how His mercy works. You lose your wife, you lose your house, you lose your job. Mim comes in the same day your mother couldn't sleep a wink for nightmares, I bet she's been downstairs all day trying to tidy up if it kills her, you wonder what's next." But he has just said it: Mom's death is next. The number 16A bus joggles, sways, smells of exhaust. The Mt. Judge way, there are fewer Negroes than toward West Brewer. Rabbit sits on the aisle; Pop, by the window, suddenly hawks and spits. The spittle runs in a weak blur down the dirty glass. "Goddammit, but that burns me," he explains, and Rabbit sees they have passed a church, the big gray Presbyterian at Weiser and Park: on its steps cluster some women in overcoats, two young men with backwards collars, nuns and schoolchildren carrying signs and unlit candles protesting the war. This is Moratorium Day. "I don't have much use for Tricky Dick and never have," Pop is explaining, "but the poor devil, he's trying to do the decent thing over there, get us out so the roof doesn't fall in until after we leave, and these queer preachers so shortsighted they can't see across the pulpit go organizing these parades that all they do is convince the little yellow Reds over there they're winning. If I were Nixon I'd tax the bejesus out of the churches, it'd take some of the burden off the little man. Old Cushing up there in Boston must be worth a hundred million just by his lonesome."
"Pop, all they're saying is they want the killing to stop."
"They've got you too, have they? Killing's not the worst thing around. Rather shake the hand of a killer than a traitor."