John Updike - Rabbit Remembered

"Sure did."

"And you don't want to get away? I was always dying to. I wanted to dance and did make a few chorus lines, but never in shows that had long runs, that was just my luck. What I do now, to make ends meet-the city has become ridiculously expensive, even the neighborhoods that used to be grungy-I facilitate sales at a ticket agency. To put it baldly, I take orders over the phone. My brothers and father think it's a grotesque career for a man past his fortieth birthday, but long ago I decided that they and the good folk of greater Brewer weren't going to live my life for me. My agency sets up out-of-town theatre tours, so there are some executive and negotiative skills involved-really, I don't see why I should be apologizing, I get free tickets to any show I want and still do my jetés and pliés for an hour every day. I haven't given up on dancing; there are more and more good roles for males well past puberty. The producers are waking up to the audience demographics. The graying of America-we're all part of it."

Annabelle looks around, afloat in this family simmer. Her own family, in her recollection, took life from her brothers as they grew and brought back pieces of the world-games played, skills mastered, sayings and songs-but her mother was an overweight recluse and Frank stingy with his words, running his buses to bring in cash, like all farmers feeling left behind and exploited. Their holiday occasions had something furtive about them, and half meant. The families of her girlfriends at the regional high school had longer, more exotic summer vacations than she and bigger Christmas trees, more presents, a keener and lighter-hearted will to celebrate. It was a relief to her when this moment of holiday exposure-like the baby Jesus in his manger naked to the starry sky-was over and they could again blend into the safe, laborious routines of everyday, the new year begun. A boy called Jamie, the only boy she really knew for years, asked her to the senior prom, and her dress, peach chiffon with a satin bodice, seemed a piece of her parents' flesh she was wearing, carved from their scanty budget, hot and sticky on her skin. She felt stiff as a doll, tarted up, even though her mother, in her jeans and flannel shirt, tried to see her off with a blessing: "My beautiful baby girl," she said. Annabelle had not felt entitled to be the expense her brothers were-their sports equipment, their field trips, their memberships-as if she sensed, in her mother's ruefully loving touch, the hidden truth that she was only her mother's child. She watches this other family with interest, her brother a lamb among his stepkin.

Nelson sits at the far end of the table, between Mrs. Dietrich and the plump, short, opinionated Margie. Between Margie and Janice the two older children, restless boys, sit and stare with undisguised curiosity across at Annabelle. On the other side of Georgie are his two brothers, Alex and then Ron Junior, in turn next to his youngest child, a girl in a high chair, and next to her her grandfather, who as the wine bottle in front of him empties becomes increasingly cozy with Mrs. Dietrich. Her leathery form is adorned with lots of draggy metal jewelry, as if for some other occasion, a gaudier and more fashionable one than this family observance. The Dietrichs bring to the meal the grace of money, the wealth of honest material industry, its machinery sold south, its employees long dismissed and dead of lint and toxic relaxants, but its invested profits still working for the happiness of the founder's heirs, to the third generation.

Janice sits at the table's foot, opposite her husband and beside the courtly Deet, but she has the air less of the hostess than of a guest lucky to be there, increasingly light-headed as her wineglass is refilled and the meal she has struggled to prepare is dutifully consumed. The turkey was dry and the gravy a little thick and cold but the stuffing, mashed potatoes, and cranberry sauce all came out of a box and were excellent, save for that last fillip of taste, tart or peppery, that only a fond and confident cook can impart. Janice's bearing breathes relief that she will not have to do this for another year. She sits nodding at Deet's description of the myriad temples of Myanmar, once known as Burma, the country in Southeast Asia least spoiled by Western tourists thanks to its tough little generals, while resting her glazed eyes on the sight of her husband's head nudging ever closer to Doris's dangling copper earring. Yet even thus engaged Ronnie now and then darts toward Annabelle a look that feels like a thrust; it makes her uneasy, it touches her depths.

"And now the bitch is going to run," Doris's harsh, seldom contradicted voice leaps from her tête-à-tête. "They have no shame, those two."

The pair of little boys, ten and eight and bored beyond endurance, have been excused until dessert and can be heard banging about in the sunporch beyond the kitchen. Annabelle watches Janice to see when she will get up to clear the dishes away, so she can offer to help her. The hostess makes no move except to sip from her glass, though Mr. Dietrich's braying survey of his adventures abroad has momentarily ceased. His wife's voice, overheard by all but him, has stilled the table.

Nelson studies his untidy plate. Cranberry sauce has stained the mashed potatoes. Frowning down at it, he asks, "What does she have to be ashamed of?"

"Well, she's a crook, for one thing," Ron Junior volunteers, in case Doris Dietrich has no ready answer.

"And for another she's no more a New Yorker than I am," Alex adds with a surprising quickness, punching in his data.

The third brother has to chime in. "What's a New Yorker?" Georgie asks. "We're all immigrants there."

"You going to vote for her?" Ron Junior asks him.

Annabelle feels Georgie at her side cringe but muster mettle to reply, "Probably. If it's Giuliani she runs against. He's an uptight control freak who really blew it with this Brooklyn Museum flap. He tried to withhold city funds, it's as bad as art under Communism."

Doris says, the bracelets on her arm jingling as she props her elbow and pulls a smoking cigarette from her mouth, "The city is safer to visit than it's been for twenty years. Deet and I used to be scared to go there and now we're not."

"Maybe that's just demographics," Nelson says. "There are fewer young black men. And thanks to Clinton's boom more of them have jobs."

Alex announces, "Clinton in my book gets no credit whatsoever for the prosperity. It's all due to the American electronics industry. If anything his taxes have held it back. And now the Department of Justice is going after Microsoft-talk about killing the goose that lays the golden eggs."

"And Alan Greenspan," Deet announces, having caught some of the drift.

"Nelson is defending Clinton, dear," Doris calls down the length of the table to him.

"And Mrs. Clinton, too," Nelson says. He has a defiant streak, Annabelle sees-a disregard that might be their father in him.

"I think they're both disgusting," Ron Junior's chubby wife puts it, having returned from the direction of the kitchen to check on her two noisy sons. "I blame her as much as him for the Monica mess."

"How so?" Nelson asks.

"Don't play naive, Nelson. She's been enabling his affairs for years -without her defending him over Gennifer Flowers he wouldn't have ever got elected."

"She keeps him hard up," their host says at the head of the table. There is a flushed pinkness to Ronnie's head, in the scalp that shows through his skimpy hair, in the tint of his tender-looking eyelids, in the color that glows through his protuberant ears. "Like they used to do for prizefighters." It's another generation speaking, Annabelle thinks. A coarser, more physical, rust-belt mentality. This man knew her biological father-played the same auditorium-gyms, inhaled the same coal-smoky air.