"Hey, hey, hey," Rabbit cries, and stands up to defend his sister. Mother rears away, scoffing. They are in the narrow place between the two houses; only himself and the girl; it is Janice Springer. He tries to explain about his mother. Janice's head meekly stares at his shoulder; when he puts his arms around her he is conscious of her eyes being bloodshot. Though their faces are not close he feels her breath, hot with tears. They are out behind the Mt. Judge Recreation Hall, out in back with the weeds and tramped—down bare ground and embedded broken bottles; through the wall they hear music on loudspeakers. Janice has a pink dance dress on, and is crying. He repeats, sick at heart, about his mother, that she was just getting at him but the girl keeps crying, and to his horror her face begins to slide, the skin to slip slowly from the bone, but there is no bone, just more melting stuff underneath; he cups his hands with the idea of catching it and patting it back; as it drips in loops into his palms the air turns white with what is his own scream.
The white is light; the pillow glows against his eyes and sunlight projects the bubble flaws of the window panes onto the drawn shade. This woman is curled up under the blankets between him and the window. Her hair in sunlight sprays red, brown, gold, white, and black across her pillow. Smiling with relief, he gets up on an elbow and kisses her solid slack cheek, admires its tough texture of pores. He sees by faint rose streaks how imperfectly he scrubbed her face in the dark. He returns to the position in which he slept, but he has slept too much in—recent hours. As if to seek the entrance to another dream he reaches for her naked body across the little distance and wanders up and down broad slopes, warm like freshly baked cake. Her back is toward him; he cannot see her eyes. Not until she sighs heavily and stretches and turns toward him does he know she is awake.
Again, then, they make love, in morning light with cloudy mouths, her breasts floating shallow on her ridged rib cage. Her nipples are sunken brown buds, her bush a brass froth. It is almost too naked; his climax seems petty in relation to the wealth of brilliant skin, and he wonders if she pretends. She says not; no, it was different but all right. Really all right. He goes back under the covers while she pads around on bare feet getting dressed. Funny how she puts on her bra before her underpants. Her putting on her underpants makes him conscious of her legs as separate things: thick pink liquid twists diminishing downward into her ankles. They take a rosy light from the reflection of each other as she walks around. Her accepting his watching her flatters him, shelters him. They have become domestic.
Church bells ring loudly. He moves to her side of the bed to watch the crisply dressed people go into the limestone church across the street, whose lit window had lulled him to sleep. He reaches and pulls up the shade a few feet. The rose window is dark now, and above the church, above Mt. Judge, the sun glares in a facade of blue. It strikes a shadow down from the church steeple, a cool stumpy negative in which a few men with flowers in their lapels stand and gossip while the common sheep of the flock stream in, heads down. The thought of these people having the bold idea of leaving their homes to come here and pray pleases and reassures Rabbit, and moves him to close his own eyes and bow his head with a movement so tiny that Ruth won't notice. Help me, Christ. Forgive me. Take me down the way. Bless Ruth, Janice, Nelson, my mother and father, Mr. and Mrs. Springer, and the unborn baby. Forgive Tothero and all the others. Amen.
He opens his eyes to the day and says, "That's a pretty big congregation."
"Sunday morning," she says. "I could throw up every Sunday morning."
"Why?"
She just says, "Fuh," as if he knows the answer. After thinking a bit, and seeing him lie there looking out the window seriously, she says, "I once had a guy in here who woke me up at eight o'clock because he had to teach Sunday school at nine—thirty."
"You don't believe anything?"
"No. You mean you do?"
"Well, yeah. I think so." Her rasp, her sureness, makes him wince; he wonders if he's lying. If he is, he is hung in the middle of nowhere, and the thought hollows him. Across the street a few people in their best clothes walk on the pavement past the row of worn brick homes; are they walking on air? Their clothes, they put on their best clothes: he clings to the thought giddily; it seems a visual proof of the unseen world.
"Well, if you do what are you doing here?" she asks.
"Why not? You think you're Satan or somebody?"
This stops her a moment, standing there with her comb, before she laughs. "Well you go right ahead if it makes you happy."
He presses her. "Why don't you believe anything?"
"You're kidding."
"No. Doesn't it ever, at least for a second, seem obvious to you?"
"God, you mean? No. It seems obvious just the other way. All the time."
"Well now if God doesn't exist, why does anything?"
"Why? There's no why to it. Things just are." She stands before the mirror, and her comb pulling back on her hair pulls her upper lip up; women are always looking that way in the movies.
"That's not the way I feel about you," he says, "that you just are."
"Hey, why don't you get some clothes on instead of just lying
there giving me the Word?"
This, and her turning, hair swirling, to say it, stir him. "Come here," he asks. The idea of making it while the churches are full excites him.
"No," Ruth says. She is really a little sore. His believing in God grates against her.
"You don't like me now?"
"What does it matter to you?"
"You know it does."
"Get out of my bed."
"I guess I owe you fifteen more dollars.'
"All you owe me is getting the hell out."
"What! Leave you all alone?" He says this as with comical speed, while she stands there startled, he jumps from bed and gathers up some of his clothes and ducks into the bathroom and closes the door. When he comes out, in underclothes, he says, still clowning, "You don't like me any more," and moves pouting to where his trousers are neatly laid on the chair. While he was out of the room she made the bed.
"I like you enough," she says in a preoccupied voice, tugging the bedspread smooth.
"Enough for what?"
"Enough."
"Why do you like me?"
"'Cause you're bigger than I am." She moves to the next corner and tugs. "Boy that used to gripe hell out of me, the way these little women everybody thinks are so cute grab all the big men."
"They have something," he tells her. "They seem easier to nail down."
She laughs and says, "To nail down or screw?"
He pulls up his trousers and buckles the belt. "Why else do you like me?"
She looks at him. "Shall I tell you?"
"Tell me."
"'Cause you haven't given up. In your stupid way you're still fighting."
He loves hearing this; pleasure spins along his nerves, making him feel immense. But American modesty has been drilled into him, and "the will to achievement" glides out of his mouth, which he tries to make look lopsided. She gets it.
"That poor old bastard," she says. "He really is a bastard too."
"Hey, I'll tell you what," Rabbit says. "I'll run out and get some stuff at that grocery store you can cook for our lunch."
"Say, you settle right in, don't you?"
"Why? Were you going to meet somebody?"
"No, I don't have anybody today."
"Well, then. You said last night you liked to cook."
"I said I used to."
"Well, if you used to you still do. What shall I get?"
"How do you know the store's open?"
"Isn't it? Sure it is. Those little stores make all their money on Sundays, what with the supermarkets." He goes to the window and looks up at the corner. Sure, the door of the store opens and a man comes out with a newspaper.
"Your shirt's filthy," she says behind him.
"I know." He moves away from the window light. "It's Tothero's shirt. I got to get my own clothes. But let me get us food now. What shall I get?"