She is sitting up in the bed, her hands quiet on the quilted coverlet, an inheritance from her own mother. The television is also quiet. Mom stares out ofthe window at the maples. They have dropped leaves enough so the light in here seems harsh. The sad smell is more distinct: fleshly staleness mingled with the peppermint of medicine. To spare her the walk down the hall they have put a commode over by the radiator. To add a little bounce to her life, he sits down heavily on the bed. Her eyes with their film of clouding pallor widen; her mouth works but produces only saliva. "What's up?" Harry loudly asks. "How's it going?"
"Bad dreams," she brings out. "L-dopa does things. To the system."
"So does Parkinson's Disease." This wins no response. He tries, "What do you hear from Julia Arndt? And what's-er-name, Mamie Kellog? Don't they still come visiting?"
"I've outlasted. Their interest."
"Don't you miss their gossip?"
"I think. It scared them when. It all came true."
He tries, "Tell me one of your dreams."
"I was picking scabs. All over my body. I got one off and underneath. There were bugs, the same. As when you turn over a rock."
"Wow. Enough to make you stay awake. How do you like Mim's being here?"
"I do."
"Still full of sauce, isn't she?"
"She tries to be. Cheerful."
"Hard as nails, I'd say."
"Inch by inch," Mom says.
"Huh?"
"That was on one. Of the children's programs. Earl leaves the set on and makes me watch. Inch by inch."
"Yeah, go on."
"Life is a cinch. Yard by yard. Life is hard."
He laughs appreciatively, making the bed bounce more. "Where do you think I went wrong?"
"Who says. You did?"
"Mom. No house, no wife, no job. My kid hates me. My sister says I'm ridiculous."
"You're. Growing up."
"Mim says I've never learned any rules."
"You haven't had to."
"Huh. Any decent kind of world, you wouldn't need all these rules."
She has no ready answer for this. He looks out of her windows. There was a time – the year after leaving, even five years after when this homely street, with its old-fashioned high crown, its sidewalk blocks tugged up and down by maple roots, its retaining walls of sandstone and railings of painted iron and two-family brickfront houses whose siding imitates gray rocks, excited Rabbit with the magic of his own existence. These mundane surfaces had given witness to his life; this cup had held his blood; here the universe had centered, each downtwirling maple seed of more account than galaxies. No more. Jackson Road seems an ordinary street anywhere. Millions of such American streets hold millions of lives, and let them sift through, and neither notice nor mourn, and fall into decay, and do not even mourn their own passing but instead grimace at the wrecking ball with the same gaunt facades that have outweathered all their winters. However steadily Mom communes with these maples – the branches' misty snake-shapes as inflexibly fixed in these two windows as the leading of stained glass – they will not hold back her fate by the space of a breath; nor, if they are cut down tomorrow to widen Jackson Road at last, will her staring, that planted them within herself, halt their vanishing. And the wash of new light will extinguish even her memory of them. Time is our element, not a mistaken invader. How stupid, it has taken him thirty-six years to begin to believe that. Rabbit turns his eyes from the windows and says, to say something, "Having Mim home sure makes Pop happy"; but in his silence Mom, head rolling on the pillow, her nostrils blood-red in contrast with the linen, has fallen asleep.
He goes downstairs and makes himself a peanut-butter sandwich. He pours himself a glass of milk. He feels the whole house as balanced so that his footsteps might shake Mom and tumble her into the pit. He goes into the cellar and fmds his old basketball and, more of a miracle still, a pump with the air needle still screwed into the nozzle. In their frailty things keep faith. The backboard is still on the garage but years have rusted the hoop and loosened the bolts, so the first hard shots tilt the rim sideways. Nevertheless he keeps horsing around and his touch begins to come back. Up and soft, up and soft. Imagine it just dropping over the front of the rim, forget it's a circle. The day is very gray so the light is nicely even. He imagines he's on television; funny, watching the pros on the box how you can tell, from just some tone of their bodies as they go up, if the shot will go in. Mim comes out of the house, down the back steps, down the cement walk, to him. She is wearing a plain black suit, with wide boxy lapels, and a black skirt just to the knee. An outfit a Greek would like. Classic widow. He asks her, "That new?"
"I got it at Kroll's. They're outlandishly behind the coasts, but their staid things are half as expensive."
"You see friend Chas?"
Mim puts down her purse and removes her white gloves and signals for the ball. He used to spot her ten points at Twenty-one when he was in high school. As a girl she had speed and a knockkneed moxie at athletics, and might have done more with it if he hadn't harvested all the glory already. "Friend Janice too," she says, and shoots. It misses but not by much.
He bounces it back. "More arch," he tells her. "Where'd you see Jan?"
"She followed us to the restaurant."
"You fight?"
"Not really. We all had Martinis and retsina and got pretty well smashed. She can be quite funny about herself now, which is a new thing." Her grease-laden eyes squint at the basket. "She says she wants to rent an apartment away from Charlie so she can have Nelson." This shot, the ball hits the crotch and every loose bolt shudders looser.
"I'll fight her all the way on that."
"Don't get uptight. It won't come to that."
"Oh it won't. Aren't you a fucking little know-it-all?"
"I try. One more shot." Her breasts jog her black lapels as she shoves the dirty ball into the air. A soft drizzle has started. The ball swishes the net, if the net had been there.
"How could you give Stavros his bang if Janice was there?"
"We sent her back to her father."
He had meant the question to be rude, not for it to be answered. "Poor Janice," he says. "How does she like being out-tarted?"
"I said, don't get uptight. I'm flying back tomorrow. Charlie knows it and so does she."
"Mim. You can't, so soon. What about them?" He gestures at the house. From the back, it has a tenement tallness, a rickety hangdog wood-and-tar-shingle backside mismatched to its solid street face. "You'll break their hearts."
"They know. My life isn't here, it's there."
"You have nothing there but a bunch of horny hoods and a good chance of getting V.D."
"Oh, we're clean. Didn't I tell you? We're all obsessed with cleanliness."
"Yeah. Mim. Tell me something else. Don't you ever get tired of fucking? I mean" – to show the question is sincere, not rude "I'd think you would."
She understands and is sisterly honest. "Actually, no. I don't. As a girl I would have thought you would but now being a woman I see you really don't. It's what we do. It's what people do. It's a connection. Of course, there are times, but even then, there's something nice. People want to be nice, haven't you noticed? They don't like being shits, that much; but you have to find some way out of it for them. You have to help them."