John Updike - Rabbit Remembered

Nelson does not remember when he realized that his father and Mrs. Harrison were having an affair. He had his own family and problems back then and his parents' friends to him were a bunch of aging crocks who hung out at the Flying Eagle and thought having a third g-and-t was a real trip and saying "fuck" in mixed company a real break-through. Buddy Inglefinger was the worst asshole, but Webb Murkett and his zaftig little child bride were right up there for repulsiveness. Mrs. Harrison he hardly ever looked at, she was so drab, so quiet, so naggingly ill. Yet, when made extra alert by coke, Nelson could feel currents-just the way the grown-ups grouped when he saw them together, Mom standing next to gawky Mr. Murkett or maybe stocky Mr. Harrison and Dad and Mrs. Harrison just hanging back a half-step together, talking so nobody else could hear, a funny tingling sort of extra peacefulness between them. She was nice to Nelson, too, a little too nice, as if to a much discussed problem child. This sallow, schoolmarmy, calm-voiced woman knew too many things about him, and liked him a shade more than on his own he deserved. It was eerie, the way she was already under his skin. The Murketts split up and the Inglefingers moved away-Buddy had found a woman as flaky as he-but the Harrisons and the Angstroms still would see one another, the six months when Mom and Dad were back from Florida, going out to a movie or a Blasts game, though Dad always said he couldn't stand Ronnie and never had, not since Ronnie was a tough kid from Wenrich Alley. And Nelson would notice that in this quartet his father was less noisy than usual, less frisky and skittish in the way he put on to annoy Mom, more subdued and contented: he seemed more grown-up. It was hard to associate this different man with Mrs. Harrison, but what else would explain it? And then she died. And his father showed less grief than he should have, even scrapped with the grieving widower at the funeral. What a hard-hearted thick-skinned showboat his father had been, just as Ronnie said.

The fact of the affair has long since leaked out and poisons any get-together with his stepbrothers. Not that they say anything. But they know, and they see him as heir to his father's guilt, to the pollution of their otherwise perfect mother.

"Alex, it's great to see you up here," Nelson lies. "Are you getting a Southern accent yet?"

"It's infectious," agrees the former computer whiz, now a middle-management tool. "Virginia's a funny state-half hillbilly and half megalopolis, at the Washington end."

"Like Pennsylvania and Philly," Nelson offers.

"It has a better sense of itself than Pennsylvania. It had all those Presidents, and the Confederate capital, and now the economy is taking off. The skyscrapers they can't build over in the District are being built across the river in Virginia." His words issue from his little mouth grudgingly, as if his brain is being made to perform an uncongenial function.

"Have you met my sister Annabelle? Half-sister, actually."

"I heard she would be here. How do you do?"

"Hi," says Annabelle, wondering if this is the brother Nelson wants her to get to know. It must be: of the other two, one is gay and the other already married, she can see. But why does Nelson assume that if she had wanted to marry she wouldn't have, ages ago? It's insulting, for him to think she couldn't have landed a doctor for herself, back when she was younger. This pale man in bifocals, the pride of the Harrisons, reminds her of a doctor-the same chilly neatness, the same superior air of having mastered a language only a few can speak.

"And what do you do?" he asks her, as if everybody knows what he does.

"Oh, hang out," she says, to tease, he seems so prissy, so glassily impervious.

Nelson at her side intervenes: "She's a licensed practical nurse, in private practice for now, mostly the elderly."

"Mmm, impressive," Alex says. "The geriatric is a real growth sector."

"They're more lonely than sick, a lot of them," she offers, not sure whether he is being hostile or merely thinks in terms of sectors.

"You wonder how much dead weight society can carry," he goes on. "At some point in the next millennium, governments will have to establish a cut-off point. Eskimos did it, when they were a viable population. Native American tribes did it. In Sicily, they used to make a party of it-everybody piled on with pillows, so when the old person smothered there was no single person who had, so to speak, 'done it.'"

He is hostile, she decides. She says, "I don't know, there's always something worthwhile there, even when they can't remember from one minute to the next. They're easy to make contact with. Maybe the shame they can't express, about being useless, opens them up." His mouth tightens, his glasses glint. He has taken her meaning, that he is not open or easy to make contact with. All this probing and grappling we must do, out in society: how much easier, Annabelle thinks, it is to stay in rooms you know as well as your own body, having a warm meal and an evening of television, where it's all so comfortably one-way.

Seated at the table, she feels comfortable next to Mr. Dietrich, with his handsome long head and little fake-flesh hearing aid and sharp high cheekbones blotched by a stately excitement. He tells her about his travels-the bulky souvenirs his wife insists on buying, the number of times they have been cheated-in Mexico, in Egypt, in Sri Lanka. He conveys his pleasure in being able to support an acquisitive wife and legions of cheats. "Most of these foreigners are rascals," he says, "but you can't blame them, since they labor under the misfortune of not being Americans." And he looks down at her sideways slyly, to see how she takes that, and turns to Nelson's mother on his other side, asking, "Isn't that right, Janice? Did you hear what I said to the delightful young lady?"

"No, Deet darling, say it again to me!"

Mrs. Harrison is tense. Her dark eyes-like Nelson's, but moister, female, and less lashy, shrunken by age-have been shuttling up and down the table, watching all those faces connected to her. With a stepgrandson on her other side, she has lurched at the old man's overture. They know each other; they have between them that toothless intimacy of the more-than-middle-aged-they can banter without any chance of follow-up.

"I said, my dear, that you can't blame foreigners for being rascals since they labor under the misfortune of not being Americans!"

Janice puzzles. "I'm not sure I get it. If they're foreigners, of course they're not Americans."

"Of course! Exactly!" Deet in deaf triumph rests his big mottled hand on her forearm and fondly squeezes.

On Annabelle's other side, Georgie asks her about Broadway shows. He cannot believe she's never seen Cats or Miss Saigon. But he obliges her with a description of a show called Keep Bangin' that consists of nothing but men playing drums. He offers to get her and Nelson tickets: "People here really live so much closer to New York than they realize. The drive takes less than three hours, and if you don't want to bother with a car to park there's a perfectly usable bus. If you and Nelson don't want to hear all that drumming I know one of the dance coaches for the revival of Kiss Me, Kate that's going to open next week. The most amazing production I've seen lately has the rather embarrassing title The Vagina Monologues, a one-woman show by Eve Ensler, and it's really more serious than it sounds. It's about us and our bodies. All of us. Men, women, and in-between."

"Nelson and I don't really go around together like that," she must point out. "We discovered each other just recently."

"What a remarkable thing," he says, eager to follow any lead she gives him. She makes him uneasy, she realizes. A grin is held on his face like a firecracker ready to go off. His face is theatrically large-featured, and sun-wrinkled like a farmer's-from beaches and vacations, she supposes. He has a marathoner's unnatural leanness, to go with his mobile full lips, big beaky nose, and long, ropily veined hands. He asks, "You grew up around here?"