John Updike - Rabbit At Rest

When the woman goes, Janice resumes. The tip of her tongue protrudes a second or two between her lips as she tries to think. "I'm not sure I understand it entirely, but you know how we keep a rolling inventory – so many trucks and vans and cars a month from Mid-Atlantic Toyota in Maryland."

"Between twenty and twenty-five a month is how it's been running," Harry tells her, to let her know he may be flat on his back but knew his business. "We haven't been able to move three hundred new units a year except that one year, '86, after Nelson first took over. The strong yen's been killing us, and Honda and Nissan taking a bigger bite. Ford Ranger put a real dent in our one-ton pickup last year."

"Harry, try to focus. The way it was explained to me is that there's this Toyota Motors Credit Corporation in California that finances our inventory direct with Mid-Atlantic and gets paid when we sell a car and adds to our credit account when we order one for the lot. What Nelson was doing, each month he'd report one or two sales fewer than there actually were and so Toyota would roll over the indebtedness on these cars while he and Lyle put the proceeds in a separate account they'd opened up in the company name, you know how banks now are always offering you all these different accounts, savings and checking with savings and capital accounts with limited checks and so on. So every month we'd owe this TMCC for one or two more cars than were actually on the lot and our debt to them kept getting bigger and our actual inventory was getting smaller; in two or three years if nothing had happened we would have had no new cars in stock at all and owed Mid-Atlantic Toyota a fortune!"

"How much do we actually owe 'em?" His mind can't quite assign weight to these facts, these phantom Toyotas, yet. He is still thinking hospital thoughts -the pineapple he's been promised for breakfast, and whether or not he has taken his digitalis for the evening.

"Nobody knows, Harry. Nelson doesn't exactly remember and Lyle says a lot of the disks he was keeping the accounts on have been accidentally erased."

"Accidentally on purpose, as they used to say," he says. "What a shit. What a pair of shits."

"I know, it's horrible," Janice says, "and Lyle is horrible on the phone. He says he's dying and doesn't care what we do to him! He sounded kind of crazy in the head; isn't that one of the things that happens?" The weight of the facts hits her and bears her suddenly down into hysteria; the tears flow accompanied by sobs and she tries to rest her wet face on his blanketed chest, but she is too short, perched on the chair beside his high bed, and instead presses her eyes and mouth against the hard mattress edge, burbling her disbelief that he would do this to her.

"He" means Nelson; Harry is off the hook for once. In her grief her whole head is hot, even the top of her skull, like a pot come to boil. He comfortingly rubs it, through her little new hairdo, and tries not to smile. Serve them both right, he thinks. Springers. Her dark hair is so fine it sticks to his fingers like cobwebs. For a good five minutes he massages her warm unhappy head with his fingertips while staring at the blank television screen and thinking that he is missing the six-o'clock news, followed by national news at six-thirty. Somehow he can't believe that what Janice is trying to tell him ranks with the national news, for reality. She may be his wife but she's no Connie Chung, let alone Diane Sawyer with her wide-apart blue eyes and melting mouth and stunned look like some beautiful blonde ox. "So what's going to happen?" he asks Janice at last.

She lifts her tear-smeared face and, surprisingly, has some answers. Charlie must have been coaching her. "Well, once we find out how much we owe TMCC we'll have to settle up. We've been paying interest on the inventory so they shouldn't care too much, it's like a mortgage, only Nelson has sold the house without telling them."

"If he faked any signatures, that's forgery," Harry says, and a black dye of despair is beginning to enter his heart, as he sees what a lost cause his son is. Human garbage, like his own father once said of him. He asks, "What's going to happen with the kid?"

Janice blinks her wet lashes. What she has to say seems to her so momentous she withholds it a moment. Her voice has the juicy precision Ma Springer would speak with when she had made up her mind. "He's agreed to enter a rehab place. Immediately."

"Good, I guess. What made him agree?"

"I said it was either that or I'd fire him from the lot. And prosecute."

"Wow. You said that? Prosecute?"

"I did, Harry. I made myself."

"To your own son?"

"I had to. He's been sinking, and he knows it. He was grateful, really. We had it out right there on the lot, out where the weeds are, while Charlie and the accountant stayed inside. Then we made some phone calls, from your old office."

"Where is this rehab place?"

"In North Philadelphia. It's the one his counsellor recommends, if he can get Nelson in. They're all overcrowded, you know. Society can't keep up. There are some day-treatment programs in Brewer but his counsellor says the important thing is to get away from the entire environment the drugs are part of."

"So he really did go to a counsellor, after that blowup with Pru. "

"Yes, to everybody's surprise. And even more surprisingly, Nelson seems to like him. Respect him. It's a black man."

Harry feels a jealous, resentful pang. His boy is being taken over. His fatherhood hasn't been good enough. They're calling in the professionals. "For how long is the rehab?"

"The complete program is ninety days. The first month is detox and intensive therapy, and then he lives in a halfway house for sixty days and gets some kind of a job, a community-service sort of thing probably, just something to get him back out into the normal world."

"He'll be gone all summer. Who'll run the lot?"

Janice puts her hand over his, a gesture that feels to him learned, coached. "You will, Harry."

"Honey, I can't. I'm a sick son of a bitch."

"Charlie says your attitude is terrible. You're giving in to your heart. He says the best thing is a positive spirit and lots of activity."

"Yeah, why doesn't he come back and run the lot if he's so fucking active?"

"He has all these other fish to fry these days."

"Yeah, and you seem to be one of them. I'm hearing you sizzle."

She giggles, along with the ugly tears drying on her face. "Don't be so silly. He's just an old friend, who's been wonderful in this crisis."

"While I've been useless, right?"

"You've been in the hospital, dear. You've been being brave in your way. Anyway as we all know there are things you can't do for me, only I can do them for myself."

He is disposed to argue this, it sounds pious in a new-fashioned way he distrusts, but if he's ever going to get back into the game he must let up and avoid aggravation. He asks, "How did Nelson take your getting tough?"

"Like I said, he liked it. He's just been begging for the rest of us to take over, he knew he was way out of control. Pru is thrilled to think he's going to get help. Judy is thrilled."

"Is Roy thrilled?"

"He's too little to understand, but as you say yourself the atmosphere around that house has been poisonous."

"Did I say poisonous?"

She doesn't bother to answer. She has straightened up and is wiping her face with a licked facial tissue.

"Will I have to see the kid before he goes?"

"No, baby. He's going tomorrow morning, before we bring you home."

"Good. I just don't know as I could face him. When you think of what he's done, he's flushed the whole bunch of us, not just you and me but his kids, everybody, right down the toilet. He's sold us all out to a stupid drug."