John Updike - Rabbit At Rest

"Dad? What's the matter?"

"Nothing. Why?"

"You sound so winded."

"I just came in. I thought you were your mother."

"Mom's been here. I'm still at the lot, she suggested I call you. I've got this great idea."

"I've heard it. You want to open a drug treatment center."

"Maybe some day down the road. But for now I think we should work on the lot as what it is. It looks great, by the way, with all those little Toyotas in those funny colors of theirs gone. People are still coming in to buy used, they think we must be having a bargain sale, and a couple of companies are interested in the location – Hyundai for instance has this big new place over past Hayesville but the location is up behind a cloverleaf and nobody can figure out how to get to it, there's too much landscaping, they'd love to have a spot right on 111 – but what I'm calling about was this idea I got last night, I ran it past Mom, she said to talk to you."

"O.K., O.K., you're good to include me," Harry says.

"Last night I was out on the river, you know over where they have all these little river cottages with colored lights and porches and steps going down into the water?"

"I don't know, actually, I've never been there, but go on."

"Well, Pru and I were over there last night with Jason and Pam, you may have heard me mention them."

"Vaguely." All these pauses for confirmation, they are wearing Harry down. Why can't the kid just spit it out? Is his father such an ogre?

"Anyway this guy they know has one of these cottages, it was neat, the colored lights and music on the radios and up and down the river all these boats, people water skiing and all -"

"Sounds terrific. I hope. Jason and Pam don't belong to that old Lyle-Slim crowd."

"They knew 'em, but they're straight, Dad. They're even thinking of having a baby."

"If you're going to keep coke licked, you got to stay away from the old coke crowd."

"Like I said, they're real straight arrow. One of their best friends is Ron Harrison, Jr., the carpenter."

What is that supposed to mean? Does Nelson know about him and Thelma? "O.K., O.K.," Harry says.

"So we were sitting there on the porch and this fantastic thing goes by – a motorcycle on the water. They have different names for them – wet bikes, surf jets, jet skis -"

"Yeah, I've seen ' em in Florida, out on the ocean. They look unsafe."

"Dad, this was the best I ever saw – it went like a rocket. Just buzzed along. Jason said it's called a Yamaha Waverunner and it operates on a new principle, I don't know, it compresses water somehow and then shoots it out the back, and he said the only guy who sells 'em, a dinky little back-yard shop up toward Shoemakersville, can't keep 'em in stock, and anyway he's not that interested, he's a retired farmer who just does it as a hobby. So I called Yamaha's sales office in New York this morning and talked to a guy. It wouldn't be just Waverunners we'd sell, of course, we'd carry the motorcycles, and their snowmobiles and trailers, and they make generators a lot of small companies use and these three- and four-wheelers, ATVs, that farmers have now to get around their places, a lot more efficient than electric golf carts -'

"Nelson. Wait. Don't talk so fast. What about Manny and the boys over in Service?"

"It isn't Manny any more, Dad. It's Arnold."

"I meant to say Arnold. The guy who looks like a pig in pajamas mincing around. I know who Arnold is. I don't care who he is, he or she for that matter, who heads the fucking service division, they're used to cars, big things with four wheels that run on gasoline instead of compressed water."

"They can adjust. People can adjust, if you're under a certain age. Anyway, Mom and I have already trimmed Service. We let go three mechanics, and are running some ads for inspection packages. We want to pep up the used end, for a while it'll be only used just like Grandpa Springer started out, he used to tell me how he kept the Toyotas out in back out of sight, people had this distrust of Japanese products. In a way it's better already, the people without much to spend aren't scared off by the new car showroom and the yen exchange rate and all. So -?"

"So?"

"What do you think of the Yamaha idea?"

"O.K., now remember. You asked. And I appreciate your asking. I'm touched by that, I realize you don't have to ask me anything, you and your mother have the lot locked up. But in answer to your question, I think it's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Jet skis are a fad. Next year it'll be jet roller skates. The profit on a toy like a motorcycle or a snowmobile is maybe a tenth that on a solid family car – can you sell ten times as many? Don't forget, there's a Depression coming."

"Who says?"

"I say; everybody says! Everybody says Bush is just like Hoover. You're too young to remember Hoover."

"That was an inflated stock market. The market if anything is undersold now. Why would we have a Depression?"

"Because we don't have any discipline! We're drowning in debt! We don't even own our own country any more! My image of this is you were sitting there on the porch of that shack with all these colored lights stoned on something or other and this thing buzzes by and you think, `Wow! Salvation!' You're almost thirtythree and you're still into toys and fads. You came back from that detox place stuffed full of good intentions and now you're getting rocks in the brain again."

There is a pause. The old Nelson would have combatted him with some childish defensive whining. But the voice on the other end of the line at last says, with a touch of the ministerial gravity and automated calm Rabbit had noticed at dinner the other week, "What you don't realize about a consumer society, Dad, is it's all fads in a way. People don't buy things because they need 'em . You actually need very little. You buy something because it's beyond what you need, it's something that will enhance your life, not just keep it plugging along."

"It sounds to me like you did too much mystic meditation at that detox place."

"You say detox just to bug me. It was a treatment center, and then a halfway house for rehab. The detox part of it just takes a couple days. It's getting the relational poison out of your system that takes longer."

"Is that what I am to you? Relational poison?" Being snubbed by Ronnie Harrison won't stop rankling, underneath this conversation. Just because you boffed a man's dead wife, he shouldn't get bitter about it. He's known Ronnie all his life.

Again, Nelson is silent. Then: "Maybe, but not only. I keep trying to love you, but you don't really want it. You're afraid of it, it would tie you down. You've been scared all your life of being tied down."

Rabbit cannot speak; he is letting a Nitrostat dissolve under his tongue. It burns like a little pellet of red candy, and induces a floating dilated feeling that adds inches to his sensation of height. The kid will make him cry if he thinks about it. He says, "Let's cut the psychology and get down to earth. What the hell do you and your mother intend to do about that hundred fifty thousand dollars Toyota has to have by the end of the month or else it will prosecute?"

"Oh," the boy says airily, "didn't Mom tell you? That's been settled. They've been paid. We took out a loan."

"A loan? Who would trust you?"

"Brewer Trust. A second mortgage on the lot property, it's worth at least half a million. A hundred forty-five, and they consolidated it with the seventy-five for Slims five cars, which will be coming back to us pretty much as a credit on the rolling inventory we were maintaining with Mid-Atlantic Motors. As soon as they took our inventory over to Rudy's lot, don't forget, they started owing us."

"And you're somehow going to pay back Brewer Trust selling water scooters?"