John Updike - Rabbit At Rest

"You need to inject that, Ma, and I'll never go near a needle. That you can count on. Jesus, you can get AIDS that way."

"Yes, well, AIDS. We all have that to worry us now." She closes her eyes and wordlessly thinks of all the misery sex has caused the world, with precious little pleasure in compensation. Nelson may have his weaknesses but her sense of him is that he has never been crazy about sex like his father – that his generation got enough of it early enough for the magic to wear off. Her poor Harry, until he began to slow down, he hopped into bed every night expecting wonders. And maybe she, too, at a time in her life, was as foolish. That time she felt she brought Charlie back from the edge of the grave with it. With sheer love. For a woman it's power, the only power they let you have until recently.

Nelson takes advantage of her silence to marshal an attack. "What if I do do a little toot on the weekends? It's no worse than all that sipping you do. Ever since I can remember you've had a little glass next to you in the kitchen or wherever. You know, Mom, alcohol kills, eventually. There are these scientific studies that show coke is much less harmful to the body than booze."

"Well," she says, tugging her short khaki skirt down over her thighs, "it may be less harmful but it seems to be a lot more expensive."

"That's because idiotic laws make it illegal."

"Yes, that's right – whatever bad you can say about alcohol at least it's legal. When your granddaddy Springer was young it wasn't and he never developed the taste for it, or he might not have made such a good thing out of his life for us all to enjoy." She sees his lips parting to interrupt and lifts her voice to continue, "And you're a lot like him in a lot of respects, Nelson. You have his nervous energy, you always have to be figuring at something, all the time, and I hate to see that energy of yours wasted on a selfdestructive thing like this." She sees him trying to break in and concludes, "Now, you must tell me about cocaine, Nelson. You must help an old lady understand. What makes it worth it? Pru says your unpaid bills are piling way up, so it must be worth quite a lot."

Nelson in exasperation slaps his body back into the chair, so that the wicker creaks; she hears something snap. "Mom. I don't want to talk about my private life. I'm thirty-two years old, for Chrissake."

"Even at eighty-two you'll still be my son," she tells him.

He tells her, "You're trying to act and talk like your mother but you and I both know you're not that sharp, you're not that tough." But saying this makes him feel so guilty he looks away, toward the bright breezy Florida day beyond the balcony, with its squeaky birdsong and mufed sounds of golf, the day climbing toward noon and temperatures in the mid-eighties, the warmest spot in the entire nation. His mother keeps her eyes on his face. In the wash of light his skin looks transparent, worn thin by unhealth, by unnatural consumption. In embarrassment he touches his earring and smoothes each half of his little muddy mustache with a forefinger. "It relaxes me," he tells her at last.

Janice waits for more, and prompts, "You don't seem that relaxed." She adds, "You were a tense child, Nelson. You took everything very seriously."

He says rapidly, "How else're you supposed to take it? Like a big joke, like Dad does, as if the fucking world is nothing but a love letter to yours truly?"

"Let's try to keep talking about you, not your father. As you say, I'm a simple woman. Not sharp, not tough. I'm very ignorant about a lot of things. The simplest things about this, like how much it takes and how much it costs. I don't even know how you take it – up the nose or smoke it or what you put it in to smoke it or any of that. All I know about cocaine is what's on Miami Vice and the talk shows and they don't explain very much. It's just not something I ever thought would make a difference in my life."

His embarrassment increases, she sees, as when he was six and sick and she would quiz him about his bowel movements. Or once when he was fourteen and she mentioned the stains on his bedsheets. But he wants to talk, she also sees, about these details, to show off the knowledge his manhood has obtained. He sighs in surrender and closes his eyes and says, "It's hard to describe. You know that expression about drunks, `feeling no pain'? After a hit, I feel no pain. I guess that means I feel pain the rest of the time. Everything goes from black and white to color. Everything is more intense, and more hopeful. You see the world the way it was meant to be. You feel powerful." This last confidence is so intimate the boy bats his eyelids, his lashes long as a girl's, and blushes.

Janice feels slightly queasy, brought this close to the something neutral and undecided in her son's sexual nature – something scared out of him – and brings her legs up on the sofa under her, the short skirt hiking up above the knees. Her legs are still firm and trim at fifty-two, her best feature as a girl and woman, her hair having always been skimpy and her breasts small and her face nondescript. She especially loves her legs here in Florida, where they turn brown and compare favorably with those of the other women, who have let themselves get out of shape or never had a shape to start with. These Jewish women tend to have piano legs, and low hips. Letting her son enjoy her ignorance, Janice asks, "How many of these snorts do you need at a time, to feel the bright colors?"

He laughs, superior. "They're called lines, Mom, if you snort them. You chop up this powder with a razor blade on a mirror usually and make them into lines about an eighth of an inch wide and an inch or two long. You inhale them into your nose with a straw or a glass tooter you can buy at these places down in Brewer near the bridge. Some of the guys use a rolled-up dollar bill; if say it's a hundred-dollar bill, that's considered cool." He smiles, remembering these crisp, glittering procedures, among friends in their condos and apartments in the high northeastern section of Brewer, backing up to Mt. Judge.

His mother asks, "Does Pru do this with you?"

His face clouds. "She used to, but then stopped when she was pregnant with Roy, and then didn't take it up again. She's become quite rigid. She says it destroys people."

"Is she right?"

"Some people. But not really. Those people would have gone under to something. Like I say, it's better for you physically than alcohol. You can do a line at work quick in the john and nobody can tell the difference, except you feel like Superman. Sell like Superman, too. When you feel irresistible, you're hard to resist." He laughs again, showing small grayish teeth like hers. His face is small like hers, as if not wanting to put too much up front where the world can damage it. Whereas Harry in his middle age has swelled, his face a moon above it all. People down here, these smart Jews, like to kid him and take advantage, like the three in that foursome.

She touches her upper lip with her tongue, not certain where to take this interview now. She knows she will not be able to pry Nelson this open soon again. He is flying back tomorrow afternoon, to make a New Year's party. She asks, "Do you do crack, too?"

He becomes more guarded. He lights a Camel and throws his head back to drink the last of the coffee. A nerve in his temple is twitching, under the gray transparent skin. "Crack's just coke that's been freebased for you – little pebbles, they call them rock. You smoke them in a kind of pipe, usually." He gestures; smoke loops around his face. "It's a nice quick lift, quicker than snorting. But then you crash quicker. You need more. You get in a run."

"You do this, then. Smoke crack."

"I've been known to. What's the diff? It's handy, it's all over the street these last couple years, it's dirt cheap, what with the competition between the gangs. Fifteen, even ten dollars a rock. They call it candy. Mom, it's no big deal. People your age are superstitious about drugs but it's just a way of relaxing, of getting your kicks. People since they lived in caves have had to have their kicks. Opium, beer, smack, pot – it's all been around for ages. Coke's the cleanest of them all, and the people who use it are successful by and large. It keeps them successful, actually. It keeps them sharp."